Labelling comes with a huge cost; the cost of pre-defined boundaries, prejudices, stereotypes and more importantly your inability to become more self-aware.

Right from the time you are born to death ‘labels’ follow you all along and these somehow start to guide or misguide your life.  Precisely the reason most are not completely satisfied with the way they lead their life or it currently is.

Let me explain this with a few examples.  As a child when you are labeled as a ‘brat’ most people around you tend to expect a certain brashness in your behavior and in every action of yours they see a little bit of it.  Repeatedly then name-calling you or terming you that way you start to believe that indeed you are one and continue to rebel against this.  The more you rebel to get to your core identity the more you are labeled and this cyclic process is what you get caught in.

There are innumerable examples like this.  The moment you see a bird which has already been labeled a ‘parrot’, ‘peacock’, ‘woodpecker’ a ‘crow’ an ‘owl’ a ‘vulture, you stop seeing the real beauty of its flight, its color, its character.  So much so that you stop observing.  It ends up just as a tick mark that you spotted a ‘labeled’ bird.

The list of such labelling can go on and on including sensitive ideas like ‘god’, ‘satan’, ‘secular’, ‘communal’, ‘democrat’ and ‘republic’.

The reason I raise this topic for discussion is to ask you this “Did you become self-aware of the several labels you came across in your life?”  “Was it a pre-defined one?”  “How has it impacted you?”

Is it true about yourself?  What have been the labels given to you/on you?

Did you ‘label’ this article in your mind even before you started reading?  What impact/influence did it have?  Did you try to be more aware of the questions I am trying to raise?

Only when you take off the ‘labels’ will you truly enjoy in complete awareness.