Beyond Good and Bad

 

Smart! Slow! Crazy! Lazy! Boring! Weak! Class Clown! Good girl! Black Sheep!

Labels!

I remember when I was 4, I had a fight with my brother and went crying to my mom saying, “he called me an idiot!” My mother calmly asked, “Are you?” “No!” I replied sobbing. “Well, then don’t believe it!” And that was it...in minutes I forgot about it and continued playing.

 

I have worked for over 30 years guiding people out of the misery of labels that others have attached to them. And not just labels others have given but those we give ourselves too...those that we have accepted and carried within that define us.

 

We pride ourselves on where we come from....on the things we’ve acquired like education titles, our neighbourhood, the cars and possessions we have or our physical appearance. Nothing wrong with being proud of ancestry and achievements but whether consciously or unconsciously this is where labels come from; some serve us for the better and some do not.

 

So who are we beyond race, nationality, gender, status or job title? At times the truth of who we are at our core is covered with so many labels that it makes it difficult to know ourselves.

 

You’d think these labels are necessary to distinguish things, to create some form of order. But rather than bringing us together they bring about separation and unconscious prejudice.

 

The truth is that our journey is not fixed. We grow, we evolve, and we change. As has been said, “some saints were once sinners and some sinners were once saints.” Some criminals were once law-abiding citizens and vice-versa.

 

There’s no ‘good’ or ‘bad’...and in time we realise that it’s just our social self that labels or accepts these labels. Though it can get scary when you begin to lose the long held sense of self. But as you stay with it the essential YOU embraces that loss.

 

The process sounds dramatic, but it doesn’t have to be. Like the moment I accepted that I wasn’t an “idiot” I could let it go. As I grew up I began to realise that the more I learned to let go of the lies I had believed about myself the less I suffered.

 

So, since I’m not slow or lazy or crazy let’s go out and play! Shall we?