The Language of Labels
Expanding the search and formation of identity and belonging
I recently had a conversation with my parents where the form of my primary relationship was the focus and during which they confessed that they “didn’t understand it.” It came on the heels of a comment in a different conversation about my “boyfriend,” after which I told my partner that the word “boyfriend” is not one I resonate with; I have always felt limited by its imagination of relationship.
In my current context, it doesn't quite feel like enough to describe the relationship I have with a human who is co-parent and partner and lover and friend. It doesn’t quite feel like enough to describe a relationship that still in flux since it's only a year old and yet holds the depth of co-creating a life. There are moments in which we have ebbed and flowed into different aspects of our relationship with more intensity or more ease. Certain parts of our relationship have been put on the back burner or brought to the forefront depending on the needs of any given moment in time. This experience of relationality is complex and dynamic.
In the conversation with my parents one of the words that came up was “commitment” and them not quite understanding the commitment that exists between us in the current form of this relationship. I'm having a baby with this human and so for me that commitment feels fairly clear. We are bound to each other for the rest of our lives because we are bringing a child into the world together.
But what feels important to say is that our commitment to each other is not a commitment to form. It is a commitment to relationality—a commitment to engaging in an unfolding of two selves together—rather than a commitment that's bound by a word or an expectation from an exterior, external community.
Our commitment doesn't come from marriage or from some social stamp. Precisely because of the expansiveness of this relationality a label often makes me squirm.
Oftentimes labels have felt static, like a box or a container with hard edges that can limit the fullness of an experience. They feel like they carry some kind of social expectation of the kind of person I'm supposed to be, like I'm expected to step into someone else's story. There's a projected self associated with a label—like I should be this kind of mother, parent, partner, woman, human, sister, friend, sibling, child, leader, teacher, healer, artist, visionary, whatever. Whatever the language is, whatever the label is, there are certain attributes and traits that are associated. And I’ll admit, sometimes those attributes and traits are helpful. They provide a needed direction, a playground of sorts, when I feel stuck in articulating an identity, a self.
As someone who values the specificity of language, I often struggle with the limitations that can accompany it. I have a deep need to be able to communicate specifically, to communicate in ways that give form to abstractions, to communicate clearly about experiences that are making their way through the hazy void of existence. I can get stuck in moments simply because I'm trying to find just the right language, just the right word, just the right description for something that feels new to me—something that doesn't quite exist yet—to be able to share that with you. Part of the joy of my work is seeking and discovering the new language to describe expanding human experience. This process is what I think teeters language back into labels.
I understand why we like labels. I understand what they offer us. They offer us place. They offer us purpose. They offer us belonging. In some ways they offer us a sense of self that's rooted and grounded, that can be located through time and space. We use labels in order to understand who we are and where we belong and what we do. We use labels to mark ourselves, mark our communities, mark our work.
And, I know through the contours and layers of my own life, that something can be lost in labels. Something can be lost in language, in the certainty and the affirmation that gets tied up with it. We can lose the mystery, the imagination, the possibility, the experience, the expansion. We can lose the liberation of discovery.
I think one of the traps that we often fall into is allowing the label to dictate our experience rather than trusting that the experience will allow new language/labels to emerge. What I mean is, using language like “parent” or “spouse” or “fill in the blank,” can come with expected scripts for behavior and acceptance into a larger, wider community. We accept the labels because we're looking for/hoping to find belonging.
This isn't a question of either/or, better/worse in terms of labels or no labels—I think we need space for both. And I also think we've over emphasized our use of labels that connect us to the communal and collective out of comfort and familiarity, but maybe also fear of being misunderstood or the potential loneliness of finding ourselves on the margins of belonging. We've over emphasized the rigidness of language that’s tied to relationality, tied to community, and what we’re left with is communities that tell individuals, “If you cannot fit into our understanding of this label, then you do not belong with us.”
So, I'm not saying that there is anything incorrect about labels. I think we need labels. Labels give form, labels give direction, labels help us understand toward who and what and where we're moving. Labels in many ways free our energy so that we can focus on the things that matter deeply to us.
But the shadow side is that these labels have the capacity to trap us into an existence that was never meant for us. They can trap us into an experience that limits the fullness of who we are meant to be. We can find ourselves beginning to operate—being, moving, doing—in ways that are actually in contrast with our innate nature, with who we are as an individual—with who we are as a singular person, not as a person part of a whole, but just as “me,” the Self I am today. We can find our selves contorting for the sake of our longing for belonging.
There's a part of me that does wish I could step into labels with more ease, that I could accept the language that already exists as a way to describe myself. Relations are centrally important to me and anything that creates tension or distance in relationship I often want to avoid or rush past. I understand that my operating in this way, vis-a-vis language and labels, at times creates discomfort for the people in my life. It’s hard to know exactly where to place me. My energy can put people on edge. It can create a sense of unknowing, of uncertainty for the other, and because someone can't quite fit me into an existing script, it then disrupts their own sense of self and identity and belonging.
The gift of living label-less (or at the very least, label-fluid) is that I’ve learned to trust that whatever experience I'm moving through, whether that's parenthood or partnerhood, I’ll receive new ways of imagining and talking about an unfolding identity and the search for belonging. It's out of living, of active engagement with complex and dynamic relationality, that my labels come. New words, new descriptors, new ways of understanding myself and relationship to others, of myself and relationship to society, of myself in relation to the cosmic, emerge from immersion in my unique story.
I’ll leave you with some wonderings I’m still mulling over:
I wonder what we do when community names us with common language and it still just doesn't fit. I wonder if the locus of responsibility lies with the individual, the community, the language, or the form. I wonder if its a web of all of these is or its none of the above. I wonder what this conversation does to the construction of rituals and rites of initiation. I wonder if more of us chose our own language—if more of us trusted our own individual experiences and allowed our naming of ourselves to be birthed from that—if that would create a larger container of freedom for the world.
I want to be a part of communities where belonging is not based on sameness or on the following of the same scripts. I want to be a part of communities where belonging is cultivated based on our own unique expression of our lives. Where belonging is found in the sharing of these personal stories, these unique experiences, without fear or shame. Maybe there's crossover so new collective language to describe this world, this life emerges. Or maybe it never does and we learn to co-exist in that tension, finding freedom in identity and belonging in new ways.