The Thinking Sapling

Labels are interesting things. When asked to describe ourselves, we use words, and the ones we choose are often significant. For instance, I could choose to call myself a student or a scholar. The former indicates my status as a learner in an institution, while the latter, if you’d forgive me for tooting my own horn, is a learner awarded for academic endeavours.

And yet these labels also place an expectation on us. There are general conduct considered befitting of those whom we call students. We expect them to study and engage with their material, a scholar even more so lest they waste their patron’s investment. But sometimes it feels like these expectations aren’t entirely external.

When we tell ourselves we’re something, it feels like we’re expecting ourselves to fulfil it. Take, for example, my clumsy mentions of philosophy in some of my blogs. I consider myself a person intrigued by the field and have called myself such, but what about the times when circumstances prevent me from pursuing this interest?

There will be times when we aren’t able to live up to what we think qualifies us for these labels. Am I really interested in philosophy if I keep procrastinating reading A Critique of Pure Reason? Am I really still interested in philosophy if I find myself too tired to pick up a book at the end of a workday?

Are they personal failings? Well, my not reading A Critique of Pure Reason might be, but a lot of times it’s circumstantial. Will we blame a student for a lack of enthusiasm after a personal tragedy? I hope most of us would say no. The world around us changes and, like it or not, so do we.

When we say we’re this or that, we create an image of ourselves, defined by language and constrained by socially defined words. What we might sometimes forget in the “I am” is that it’s descriptive. We create this image based on constraints and definitions, forgetting that we are entirely bound to that image.

Just because I said I wanted to join the army when I was ten, it doesn’t mean I want to join the army now. Just because I said I am a scholar, it doesn’t mean I’m always academically inclined. Just because I said I’m interested in philosophy, it doesn’t mean the world will always allow me to pursue it.

If you’d allow me to pose a question here, is a religious person called religious for their beliefs, or does the person hold those beliefs because they call themselves religious? The world changes, and we change, and that’s fine. Whether the label’s made by a ten-year-old you or you five seconds ago, it doesn’t define you now. They’re applied to describe, not define, you.

This extends to many things, whether it be in our careers, social status, familial roles, religion, or gender. It’s not what people or even what we call ourselves that defines us; it’s what we are now and what we live through, even if it is hard to capture in words.