Labels, and that little voice in our head.

I am what I am.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about labels. By that I mean the labels we put on ourselves and on others.

Labels bug the hell out of me, for any number of reasons. I really don’t like it when someone sticks a label on me, because it’s always for their own reasons. I may not see the justice in it, or disagree with it strongly or find it insulting.

The worst labels are the ones that justify treating someone different from everybody else.

What brought this on was getting new Twitter followers. You can’t really be on Twitter without a bio. You have to fill in those fields when setting it up.

It is surprising what some people put in those fields—those little labels. We all want to be perceived as unique, and that comes through in the wit, the sarcasm, the facetiousness of some bios . Sameness is drab, and the fact is that we are all special, unique. That’s one thing, and I understand that.

People label themselves ‘nigga’ and I, a ‘white-bread honkey,’ can even understand the point. It is defiance. It is a kind of contempt. It is a statement made for very complex reasons, some of which I don’t get because I haven’t lived that experience…

What about the guy who called himself ‘a piece of shit?’ What about the lady who said ‘I’m a bitch?’

Putting labels on ourselves is stupid, but we do it all the time. Most labels are relatively benign.

“Hi, I’m Dave. I’m an architect. This is my wife Amy. She’s a registered nurse…”

Those labels aren’t causing a lot of harm. It conveys something about who we are and what our social status is. It is a measure of our pride, and solid proof of our hard work and effort. Not all labels are necessarily bad.

Some of them can be limiting.

Someone knocked over a glass and what they said next was kind of revealing.

“It’s okay, I’ve always been stupid…”

Who told you that? That was not my initial impression.

My initial impression was that you had knocked over a glass, and we all do that from time to time.

What happens when you label a girl ‘a slut?’ Then go off and tell everyone else. Doesn’t that sort of label lead to every skanky guy who just doesn’t care to go and hit on her? Aren’t they mostly false and misleading in their statements and treatment in order to get what they want? Don’t they all lie to her to get her to do what they want—to be a slut?

Labels become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You know, my mother was really impressed with me one day.

What happened was, she introduced me to somebody, I forget who, a realtor or whatever (another label, but you know what I mean,) and the inevitable question arose.

“So, what do you do for a living, Louis?”

“I’m a writer.” That was the first time in my entire life that I had ever said that to someone. More than anything, I want other people to call me a writer. Does that seem strange? I’d give my left nut for some really great writers to say I was a good writer. What other people think of us is surprisingly important, don’t get me wrong on that score.

“I’m a writer.” Notice I didn’t say, ‘crazy as a shit-house rat,’ or ‘mean person,’ or ‘asshole.’

But then, I don’t think of myself that way. Not at all—so the label is clearly inappropriate.

I have never said, upon an introduction, ‘I’m a Caucasian.’ (Sort of self-evident anyway.)

There were a lot of things I didn’t label myself over the years—alcoholic for example.

Oh, I can drink, and I like the feeling of being a bit drunk. I’ve drank out of sheer boredom, I’ve drank to help me go to sleep at night after a long afternoon shift at the fibreglass plant, and I’ve drank socially.

But I never labeled myself an alcoholic.

And when I don’t have any money, I’m not going through withdrawal. I miss it but don’t crave it. Yet you could say I need a beer once in a while.

Labeling me ‘some guy who needs a beer once in a while’ seems rather silly and pointless, as I am sure the reader would agree.

What if you constantly told a kid, ‘You’re no good.’

Wouldn’t they try to live up to that, or at least wouldn’t they find normal reinforcement, just as we all do, when things didn’t work out, or they got into some minor trouble? Wouldn’t everything work out in the end, and as they sat in a jail cell, later in life, wouldn’t it all seem so inevitable?

Wouldn't it appear, at least to them, that they never had a chance? That it was beyond their control?

I’m constantly surprised by the things that parents say to their children.

If someone is trying to label you something bad, don’t wear that label. Pick one out for yourself—and make it a good one.

At Shalako Publishing, we are always challenging assumptions, our own mostly.

That’s a good thing, mostly, for sometimes learning takes a long time. And sometimes it happens in an instant.

I spend a lot of time alone, as you can imagine, and I do a lot of this sort of introspective thinking, but the perspective of other people is vitally important because they see us from outside, which is a completely different perspective.

My mother is a real smart lady. You know what she said?

“The voice we hear most often is our own. It’s with us always, there inside of our heads, and we can’t get away from it. Your brain is the most powerful instrument you will ever have. And it doesn’t control you—that’s a fallacy. You control it…”

She’s a real smart lady, ain’t she? I’m lucky to have her, and don’t I know it.

The point is that other people don’t hear that voice that’s inside my head or yours. They don’t know anything about it.

They make their own observations.

I was thinking about some of my Facebook friends. I won’t just pick a name, but some very respectable people are on that list. I wondered what some of them would say about me, or how they would describe me. For the most part, they seem to tolerate me, or they would drop me, wouldn’t they?

I was surprised by the answers I got—from that little voice in my head. By going outside of myself and taking another look.

It turns out I’m not such a bad guy after all.

Where did I ever get the idea that I was a bad guy?

Every once in a while we should just pick someone out of a crowd and say something nice to them.

Mostly for our own sakes.

Anyhow, thanks for listening.

End

Sensations.

Human beings live in a world of sensation. For much of the time we simply ignore it.

We ignore the kids screaming in the yard, we ignore the pangs of hunger when lunch is an hour away and we have work to do and the boss looking over our shoulder.

We ignore the heat or the cold as best we can, in fact we lock it out of our homes and automobiles. We control those sensations to some degree.

Many of our sensations don’t even register on our consciousness. Closing my eyes due to the shampoo and turning a hundred and eighty degrees in the shower, was really the only time today when I considered my sense of balance, and a marvelous thing it is, too. Fighter pilots, in the peak of health and with all kinds of physical conditioning report that vertigo, the loss of the sense of balance and the well-being that it brings is not only terrifying but uncontrollable—they have to fight to focus on their instruments and take it on pure faith that the readings are true and credible, for their body tells them otherwise.

If someone offered you a piece of chocolate cake, and you put it in your mouth and it tasted awful, what would you do? Would you eat it anyway? I mean, it looks like cake and everything.

Your taste buds would trump your vision in this particular case, wouldn’t they? No matter how good it looks or even smells—your eyes don’t have to chew it up and swallow it, do they?

We trust our sensations, we rely on them.

I rode my bike to the beach today. With no major anxieties going on right now in my personal life, it was good to focus on those sensations exclusively—no raking over old coals, no over-analyzing what so and so said, no deep worries about what people think.

The waves lapped at the shore, children screamed and hollered in the distance. The air was hot and the water was cool. The sand felt gritty between my toes. Seagulls squawked and cardinals sang in the trees behind me. A bunch of moths have hatched out recently, possibly the oak-savannah environment has something to do with it, and the little buggers were brushing up against me as the wind dried me. I stood in the shade, for the sand was too hot for my feet and I’ve had enough sun for a couple of days. The western horizon was chock full of cumulus clouds and the sky over Lake Huron was pure oxygen-blue and I drank water that was still cool, with just a hint of plastic flavour from my water bottle and sucked tobacco smoke into my lungs.

There are other sensations. The sense of well-being, of being fed, of having a full belly or a bed to sleep on. The sense of injustice or hate, or anger, is a kind of physical sensation because it brings physical effects along with it.

We like the feeling of excitement when watching football, hockey or an auto race, we like the suspense or tension of baseball and golf.

Since I came into this world, I have experienced love, hate, desire, disgust, loneliness, friendship, pain, orgasm, terror and triumph. I have enjoyed or suffered the whole gamut of emotions that humans can feel.

It’s got its ups and downs, no doubt about it, but it’s just a whole helluva lot better than feeling nothing at all.

Enjoy your lives as best you can, for life is short and there is nothing that comes afterwards.

Don’t waste your time here. Do something with it.

I wrote this naked. For one thing, my shorts are still wet, and for another, I have this other sense, probably my best one: a sense of humour.

Hopefully you do too, but if not, I pity you, for surely you must be among the most miserable of men.

Now go on, get out of here. Go out and play or something.