Are We? Or Are We?

In the past, I confess to having said things like “Men are idiots!” and I honestly felt it was true at the time, but I also knew I was making too broad of a statement, and I didn’t really mean it. Regardless, I am guilty. I’ve attempted to avoid making such statements after having a conversation with a young man whom, whilst he was apologizing to me, used the phrase, “guys are stupid!”.  I took this as his way of (unconsciously or not) taking some of the blame off of himself, like it was something he just couldn’t help or avoid. Or maybe he was just repeating another person’s words and acting on their expectations. It was funny how I made those kinds of statements about men myself, but hearing it from a man just irked me like nothing else. He might have chosen to be stupid as an individual guy, but he wasn’t destined to be stupid as a guy. He chose stupidity in this circumstance. There are guys out there that are not stupid. And you can be 100% sure I corrected him on that point! This is when I realized that making statements like that were not empowering me or making me feel better. They were just enabling and belittling to those that had hurt me as well as those who hadn’t, and not at all beneficial for anyone.

Recently, I started analyzing even further this idea of labeling people. What about the way that we label individuals, not just groups of people? Hypothetically, what if I knew of a man who I perceived to be an “idiot” and I made the claim, “That guy is an idiot”? What if I said, “That person is immature”? What if I saw someone who looked like they needed to lose or gain a little weight and I said to myself “That person is fat,” or “That person is skinny”? What if I made any kind of judgment statement using the words is or are? Those are some strong statements. By making those kinds of statements, I am unconsciously dooming those individuals in my head. I have caged them within a judgment. To me, these claims imply the inability to change. They define. They label.  

Are these people those claims? I guess within a certain definition they are. I mean, I’ve seen this certain part of them, and if my perceptions are accurate, it is or they are. However, within the simplistic boundaries of the English language, I find it difficult to clarify just what I mean when I use is or are, if I even stop to think about the implications of what I am saying. Is what I am seeing the essence of a person? Because it’s easy to jump to that conclusion even if that wasn’t meant to be implied.

We need to be careful about making statements about people because, after all, we could just be judging based off of one instance, and seeing as we aren’t all-knowing, we are almost positively missing some information. Maybe there is a certain aspect of a person that we focus on more than any other aspect, and so we end up consciously or unconsciously labeling their entire character based on that one particular characteristic. Unfortunately, the English language can make it hard to be sensitive towards others. It is easy to turn what was at first a quick perception of someone into a lasting label simply because of a verb shortage.

I guess one solution could be to create a new verb or a couple new verbs to describe specifically what we mean when describing different states of things. I’d be all for it, but I doubt most of the rest of the English speaking world would go for it. I guess this difficulty is just something we have to be aware of and careful about, because I think I see this language barrier hurting both myself and those around me. It frustrates me because part of me just wants to say that we should just stop jumping to conclusions about possible implications. But I understand how easy it is to do. Honestly, I don’t really have any golden advice on how to deal with this issue except to be aware of how you think and what you say about people. Words are important. And yes I just dared to label them as such.