Labels

I am forever grateful that people don't have labels printed on them like food products. I am a ever changing, ever morphing, ever developing living being. To get a bit poetic: I am like the shifting cloud, or the maple tree through the year: changing colors, losing leaves, growing new leaves, over and over.

I am not stagnant in my Personhood.

But it does seem to me that others would be much more comfortable if we all did have "People Labels" printed on us. That way with one glance they could just *know* who you are. Who I Am (a question I delve into every day!).

In my youth, I felt this labeling (as I think we all do) hard core. Kids try to put each other into boxes for easy identification. I thought as I got older, I would finally find that perfect *box* that suit me perfectly. Instead, what I found was that NOBODY fits into a box perfectly!! In fact, I don't think we fit into boxes easily at all!

Today, I am finally putting my finger on something that has been nagging me for quite some time--and it is those same Labels that plagued me through childhood!

I don't want to be defined in any one way!

I am a mom--and other moms are looking for *what kind* of mom am I?

I am a Jew--and other Jews (and sometimes non-Jews) ask about the *type* of Jew I am! As if my practice or non-practice defines theirs!

I am a woman--and my husband thinks that this is why I feel the labeling more than he does. I suspect he is right. Men just don't seem to concern themselves with labels.

I am a homeschooler--this one really gets the labeling machine all jammed up! I really don't know how to define the kind of homeschooling family we are (and have recently stopped trying). If you ask my local homeschooling community, they would say we are radical unschoolers. In truth, I have said that as well in the past. But the radical unschooling community I think would disagree. They would call us eclectic homeschoolers.

Do the labels matter? I don't think they should. Or more specifically, I don't think I should care how or if people label me. But there seems to be a hierarchy that gets added in once a label is placed.

And I don't understand it at all.

I think I understand why the labeling happens. I think that most people believe that if they can find a label (a box) for someone, then they can *know* them, better *understand* who that person is.

But then that makes no sense to me either! A nutritional label may give you all the ingredients and nutritional value of a food. But it doesn't give you the taste, the smell, the texture. . . . You can not truly *know* what a food is through its labeling!

So, too, with people.