Tearing off Labels

There's an old joke in America about mattress tags. You buy a new mattress or a new pillow and it's got a tag on it that says "This must not be removed except by consumer." And pretty much everyone I know has at some point made the joke about how illegal it is to rip off that tag.

Of course, being the consumer, being the person who bought the mattress, you're the person supposed to rip it off. Because that label is not there for you to see every day. That label is on the mattress so that, in theory, it's made out of safe materials, materials that are fire retardant, that are not going to be emitting toxic gases as they degrade. It's less a label for your constant notice and more there to let you know that this object was safe when you got it.

There are a lot of reasons labels come to mind these days. The English-speaking world is having arguments about stuff that has been basic reality for the entire existence of humans. But now that it's in the news, everyone's fighting over it. I'm not going to label that either, because there are like six different topics a week that that could apply to. I'll let you pick which one you think I'm thinking about.

And to take this more personal than mattress tags: I practice a form of yoga. It's kind of like halfway between yoga and tai chi. And automatically saying "yoga" or "tai chi" would have terrified teenage me. Maybe tai chi I would have been cool with, because Mr. Rogers had a tai chi session on his show once. But yoga? Oh, good gracious. All through the 1990s, that was a terrifying term for people growing up like I did in rather churchy circles.

And then at one point in my late 20s I tried yoga. I was desperate. I was physically ill, emotionally unstable, miserable in my marriage and job... and that wasn't any fault of my partner or necessarily of my employer. It was me. I didn't have the appropriate boundaries and I didn't have the appropriate personal exercise routines to keep myself going. I was eating too much, drinking too much, and not moving enough... except when I desperately needed to move and then I couldn't move as much as I wanted to because I didn't have any energy.

So after doing a little bit of reading and poking around on the internet circa 2010, generally trying to figure my stuff out, I realized that stretching really helped. You start with your hand by your knee and rotate your arm up until your hand is stretched up over your head. Totally comfortable, quick. Most of us can do it in less than a second. But what if you make yourself take 30 seconds to do that? Suddenly moving your arm becomes incredibly complicated and you have to think about every single muscle motion. That focus pulls me back into my body and helps me feel like I'm in myself, like I'm in the right place instead of in eight places at once.

I've tried a lot of different things over the years. Different forms of yoga, different exercise routines other than stretching. The only two that really click for me are slow, intense yoga and swimming, which is another form of exercise where the harder you push, the harder the water pushes back against you. Swimmers have to find that personal balance: how much effort do I want to exert so I move forward? Because if I put too much effort in, sure, I'll move forward faster, but I'll also be resisted more by the water.

Having a label can be helpful. It can help you find other people or understand medical things. I recently started taking statins, because I'm 40 now and my family has a history of high cholesterol. Talking to other people who are taking the same medication and figuring out a few of the quirks of how it makes your body feel... that helps, but once I figure that out, I don't think about taking a statin every day. I now know that if I drink enough water, eat enough vegetables, and limit my cheese intake, then I don't feel weird from my statin.

But like yoga and mattress tags, knowing I take a statin does not make me... me. That's not what makes me 40 years old with high cholesterol. I'm 40 years old with high cholesterol because that's what time and genetics have made me, and being on a statin is incidental.

When I think about all of our debates and arguments about labels...

... about "us versus the other"

... abut who is the "us" that we are claiming to be?

... and who are the others that we are pushing away? Who are the others that we are externalizing our own frustrations onto instead of coping with them ourselves?

It's remarkable how what is right and what is wrong can shift and bend. Especially when you start getting hyper-specific about labels. Instead of speaking about the same things that our faiths teach us...

Instead of speaking about the same things that we can all feel...

The labels that we use to divide and separate are usually false, usually oversimplified, usually pop-psychology and poorly applied.

So the more I see blame being assigned in the news, the more I see policies being implemented to try and fix America by getting rid of this group or that group, the more certain I am that the solution isn't labeling things and getting rid of them.

The solution? There is no single right solution except...

Love your neighbor as yourself.

And there's another part to that. I'll invite you to remember what that other part is. And as you think about that, consider how to do that missing first part without violating the equally important second part.

Love your neighbor as yourself, whoever they may be, and whatever labels may or may not apply.

Those labels are just there to help you get a vague sense of if your neighbor is safe or not, if you are safe or not, if your doctors are giving you the right medicine.

But when it comes right down to it, it's not about the labels. It's about living. And ask yourself: are you living in your body the way you should, healthily and loving your neighbor?

I think that's all we can ask ourselves. Especially in times such as these.