When I started this blog several years ago, I think I was looking to achieve two things. First I had opinions I wanted to share, initially about politics, then observations on human behavior and then religion. The second reason was that I was trying to find a way to define myself. I was trying to find the label which best fit me.
I've had some unique experiences in my life. When I was born, I was classified as a white person in South Africa, where at the time, you could be either white or non-white.
When I turned 8, I got baptized and I became a Mormon, and Mormons classify everyone as either a member or not.
I've been a South African, a Zimbabwean, a foreigner and a local.
I've been a swimmer, a cricketer, a cyclist, a runner and a triathlete.
I've been skinny, I've been fat, and where once there was hair, now I'm balding and gray.
I've been the cool kid, the nerdy kid, the guy who works at McDonalds and the IT Professional. I had the buck teeth of bugs bunny at one point, and then beginnings of a mullet at another.
I'm a father, I'm a husband, I'm a son, and the black sheep of my extended family.
I'm been both a source of pride and an embarrassment to the same people.
I could probably go on, but the point is, there is no real label which defines or can adequately capture who I am.
Why do we need labels?
What makes us want to categorize those around us?
So with a new year approaching, I think I'm going to stop trying to find a way to label myself.
I'm an evolving humanoid, trying to make the world a better place with many successes and failures, and probably falling well short of my potential, but I'm going to keep trying.
I'm Mike and I am who I am!
I'm also thinking it's time to make some changes, things I've been thinking about for a while.
I like the concept of goals and resolutions, but the problem with goals is that they tend to limit you. I could have a goal to run a marathon, and the problem is that I'll train just to run the 26.2 miles, but yet I know I can do more.
So instead of goals, I think I'd like to define some directions I'd like my life to head and keep them open ended.
When you bowl, you can focus on the pins, or you can focus on the little arrows on the lane. Since I don't know my true potential, it makes it hard to aim for... Just like the pins at the end of the lane, but if I aim using the arrows and throw myself hard enough to go well past them, I think I'll make it to the end, and the pins can fall as they may.
I'm going to spend the day trying to nail down a couple of ideas, and hopefully I'll be back tomorrow with my plans for 2010.
I'm excited! How about you?
Some random thoughts:
ReplyDeleteI like the bowling metaphor. Good stuff.
We need labels because human nature is discriminating. Why does transact SQL need syntax? Why does html need tags? A label-free world sounds awesome in theory, but it's another story in practice. I say keep the labels, just make less ride on them.
Does human nature need to be descriminating though? Don't you think if we all viewed each other as individuals that it wouldn't even be an issue? I know that's how we seem to be programmed, but do we really have to be?
ReplyDeleteIf I could take your HTML page thing...
When a site visitor views a page, they can make a pretty good assessment of the page itself by how it looks and works.
I may be making both sides of the argument here, but labels are a bit like tags. Does the end user really care how a particular effect was achieved.
On the page it could be achieved through CSS, Font tags, Div tags or any other number of tags.
As a human we could be a good honest person, but we may have any number of influences which contribute to how we achieve that.
I had a really cool conclusion until I realized it was also a perfect contradiction of itself.
Perhaps I'll try this instead...
Labels just seem far too simplistic to describe the human experience, or maybe it's the links we create between the labels that cause the problems.
You could have an extremely honest, black, christian construction worker, but none of those labels necessarily correlate to the others. You could substitute anyone of those labels and it wouldn't necessarily affect the others at all.
We might be able to reprogram the human mind to some degree, but I think it's futile because we're only interested in shedding labels we don't like. You may like to see yourself as just "Mike" and you might be able to successfully re-wire your brain to think that way.
ReplyDeleteThe question is, can it really go the other way? For instance, you see John, a white Mormon with an "Internet business." Can you honestly tell me you wouldn't at least start to make judgments about John? Or that these labels wouldn't effect how you'd approach certain subjects with him?
Going label-less is a benevolent idea, but an ultimately misguided effort. I think the key, as always, is to divorce the emotion associated with those labels.
I don't know about misguided, but I'd take futile or something similar!
ReplyDeleteRemoval of emotion absolutely!
And with respect to John... Does white or Mormon have anything to with his business? Therein lies the problem, because I might likely make an initial assessment based on that, but in reality, I shouldn't.
I've actually done business with 2 white mormon men, both involved in Internet businesses.
The first has been the absolutely best customer I could hope for.
The other was the first customer to completely screw me over.
I found out the first was a Mormon by accident. The second made a point of making sure that I knew he was, and he would regularly call to discuss his standing in the kingdom with me.
In both cases, the label of Mormon or white for that matter had nothing to do with either man's character.
I have a dream that one day a man will be judged by the content of his character and not by the color of his skin or his religious or political affiliations or lack thereof or whether it's his or her character...
I fully admit it's a Utopian type dream, and likely futile, but it's worth a shot!
I'm one more guy with gray (going white) hair ... ;)
ReplyDelete