On Labels

“What do you want to become when you grow up ?” We all get that asked a lot, especially when we’re kids. And in most of those situations, when it was asked I used to become perfectly frantic, a reckless witness under the torture, would’ve told anything.

My thought process while answering used to be like — Doctors are put on a pedestal, and you surely don’t wanna be in the limelight of your relatives, so that is out of the case. And you’re often somberly reminded by everyone that there’s no money to be made in the performing arts. So that too, I guess is out. I used to think.

Something wild, something cool… “PILOT, I wanna be a pilot” I used to say. And then they used to give you unsolicited career advice based on “facts” gleaned from questionable sources.

Looking back at this idea of “becoming” something, seems a little wrong to me.

It's as if growing up is finite, as if at some point you reach a point and that’s it.
- A quote from a book that I read, don't know which.

Chasing Labels

It’s how we love labels as human beings, we actively seek out for them throughout our lives. I mean labels do help to sort thing out, it helps us to talk about some things. But sometimes what ends up happening is that we start carrying these labels too tightly like “I wanna become this or that” or “I am not good at this”, and these labels then start to limit us.

These labels can play into an idea of becoming or needing to be a certain type of person. This idea that you’ve to become someone to be happy, that IF I become this THEN I’ll be HAPPY as if the current you is not enough, it’s not satisfactory and there something wrong with it. It’s like this is where I am, and this is where I wanna be and if I don’t reach there then… am I a failure?

Feeling behind

These goals/labels of ours can often be moving targets which at times can lead to feelings of anxiety and feeling behind in the competition we create for ourselves. Things you enjoy doing start to become things that you have to do to become someone.

Projecting these labels on your future selves

This wanting to become something is a thing that I used to do a lot and I still do sometimes, and I am slowly figuring out why my younger self used to do that. It was because of a lack of self-compassion & acceptance of my current self. Not believing in myself, lacking meaning in life. And to cure this lack I projected these labels on my future self to give life some meaning and run after it.

This future self was a place that I had invented in my head where a lot of the problems, fears, and insecurities that I had with myself didn’t exist. It became highly painful to accept the reality of my highly imperfect current self. I guess that's why I did it.

Becoming someone, I’ve slowly come to realize is a means to an end.

It was just an unhealthy headspace that we can fall into of never being enough. You don’t have to live in a way that implies you are broken and need fixing. We sometimes waste time over-analyzing and curating the “perfect” life, that we forget that we can simply just live it.