Neither this nor that

It is easy to get caught up in black or white thinking.  How quickly we decide that someone is either nice or mean, good or bad, right or wrong. And, many times we apply the same judgements to ourselves. I'm a good mom or I am a bad speller. Often we never question labels we give ourselves even years after they no longer apply. Yet, ironically when others attempt to pigeon hole us into one category or another we reject this notion vehemently.

It becomes amusing to watch the shape shifting and pretzel twisting we do when others try to label us. You're so lucky, someone tells me. Yes, I am lucky, but luck alone wouldn't have gotten me where I am today. You work so hard. Yes, but I am also lucky. You're such a calm person, people tell me. I let this one go even though my hands are cold and clammy. We simply do not want to be labeled and put on the shelf as if there is no more to us than our labels.

So, why wouldn't labels be good? After all, they save us a lot of time. We feel comfortable when we have put a label on something. We no longer need to expend energy thinking about it. Yet, with labels it is easy to slip into thinking in terms of extremes. There is little room for ambiguity once something has a label. Often, the problem occurs when we realize that our label doesn't work any more. Then, we become even more angry when the person we labeled as being on our side speaks up against us. We feel betrayed.

In the Woody Allen movie Stardust Memories the studio heads change the ending of  Sandy Bates' movie, the character played by Woody Allen. Instead of ending up in a garbage heap, the characters end up in "jazz heaven." One studio head says, "I thought you'd like it, Sandy. You love jazz." Absurd, but true.

It's never that we want to experience a single pole of anything: routine and no variety, all freedom and no structure, asserting our will and never respecting the will of others. We want perfection, but we need to remember we are human. And, sometimes what worked for us yesterday no longer works for us today. It's like the joke on comedy shows, where the good news that someone just got married is really bad news because she's ugly, which is really good news because she is rich.

In the end, it all really just depends. In order to not fall into the trap of labeling and missing out on what's real in life we need to stay awake. Be in the moment. Expend the extra calories of brain power needed to not only allow but to discern the shades of gray in our lives.  And I don't mean the fifty shades you might read about. When we find ourselves dismissing what someone is saying because they fit a certain label of ours, stop and listen. We might be surprised. And, just know that we are never only one thing or another. We are complex pretzel twists of people that come in all sorts of shapes and sizes where no two are ever exactly alike. We are neither simply this nor that. True that.