When we are just getting to know a person, or when we have to write our biography in a social network, it is usually common for us, start to put a sea of labels over ourselves, that according to us, “define” us, individualize us and let people see who we are. Our religion, sexual preference, political preference, “race”, class and each of our likes create an amount of limits to the type of person we want in our circles.
I am this or I am that. There is something more divisionist?
There is a label for everything, I can be Catholic, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu; I can be white, black, asian, latin; I can be a carnivore, vegetarian or raw foodist; I can be leftist or rightist. These are the most basic, which we first come to mind.
BE BE BE, really is that what WE ARE?, It would not be better to define it as what we BELIEVE? Something like our truth, since no one owns the absolute truth, and everyone owns his own truth.
In the background we are all the same, a human trying to do the best he/she can, by selecting beliefs in a sea of information and misinformation that is presented to us from the first day we arrived in this world.
The most curious and even funny factor comes if you have no a label for something, usually this is taken by society as simply “you don’t fit”.
Labels are SO defined that are extreme, be careful if you are vegetarian but you are using leather boots. And I wonder is it perhaps all vegetarians have to have the same reason to be vegetarian? Some people just do not like meat, or they believe eating only vegetables is healthier, not necessarily the vegetarian label must come linked to the need to love animals as much or more than to a person.
I imagine life and society in a mathematical way, so if someone does not share any of these sets with me, is not a person that should be in my life, after all we do not share anything.
Then come to my mind the question, can i surround myself or share with people who don’t have the same labels that I have? And I wonder, at what point I can learn if I limit myself to just be with what i already know?. Sounds even boring to me. Can you imagine if we all think in the same way and that we choose in the same way?
Certainly is nice to spend time with people who have the same likes, interests and ideals. I think the ideal is to spend most of the time with people who want the same as you. But I wondered if all the time I’m surrounded by people like that, I’m not closing my mind?, I’m not shutting my perspectives about other things and other views?
Learn about the ideology of another person, and hear about their ideas does not need to change my thinking necessarily.
That is the key of interaction with others: Respect. If I can respect what you think and share my thoughts and feel, respecting that the other does not think or feel the same way, then we can have a healthy relationship interacting with people that is out of those false limits we imposed. If, however, some of the people involved is determined to make the other change his mind, or think that whatever is thinking the other is wrong, then there will always be a problem. Obviously we can not share with no one that call us liars, lunatics, or that tells us with 100% certainty that we are wrong.
A few years ago, I asked a fellow to sit down for a coffee and talk about her religious beliefs, she is defined as a Jehovah’s Witness, and I had some doubts about things of her religion that i did not know on what were based. Really with that conversation, i did not wanted her to think like me, did not wanted to think like her neither. But I wanted to see religion for a minute from her point of view.
We are free to choose in who and what we believe. In particular although I am a supremely stubborn person and is very difficult for someone to move me from my bases, I do not intend to impose on anyone what is to me the truth, and i try always to keep my mind the more open than I can. Believe me, myself in this lifetime have moved my base a few times, it does not mean that i’m not defined or not sure of myself.
WE ARE ONE!! ❤
Love St Light Blvd 