He who defines himself cannot know who he is  - Tao Te Ching

I was browsing through some websites today and I saw the quote above. All I can say is that it touched me to the core and made me realize so many things that I would have never realized if I hadn’t saw it.

I can look back on my life and see how many definitions or labels I have been , strove to be , or created for myself.
Here is only a partial list:

Tomboy
Writer
Goth
Christian
Wiccan
Atheist
agnostic
Conservative
Democrat
Liberal
Anime fan
The popular girl
The nerdy girl
The intellectual
etc.

Many of these things I have striven to be the epitome of. Many hours and large amounts of cash have been spent striving for this goal of “realizing” myself in one of these labels.

And I realize that this is one of the main problems of society. Our entire civilization is segmented into various labels or definitions of a person. Our interaction and place in society is created by the various definitions that we and others , give to ourselves.

Each of these labels serve only to inhibit us. The overriding connotations created by many labels seek only to cut away parts of the person which don’t fit with the world’s expectations of that specific label. For instance, “the popular kids in high-school are not intellectual.” So parts of us are cut away and we become mere shadows of what we are in reality. We never get around to knowing what we are and what we want really , because our expectations are given to us from the outside.
Why have I always desired a label for myself? I guess its the only way I could feel that I fit in in this world. I’ve always felt like a misfit , and no matter what I didn’t really fit anywhere. I looked for a way to relate to others. Being initially rejected when I showed others my true self , I withdrew and began to ponder how to reach other people.

I think my problem with labels began quite early. I remember as a young girl I prided myself on being a “tomboy”. I loved to tell people when they asked if I liked dolls or if I had a boyfriend that I was a tomboy and didn’t like that girlie stuff. I remember crying over something as a child . My mother told me that if I was a tomboy I wouldn't be crying , because boys don't cry. That shut me up.

This was harmless I think because I chose a label that described the essence of what I felt I was. When I got older , however , things got a bit more complex.

When I was around 14 year old, I became a full blown goth girl. It was something I read about on the Internet (after all , there weren’t many goths running around in the rural parts of the Bible Belt) and decided that was what I’d try to be and what I was.
I didn’t realize how many rules one had to follow to be a part of this subculture however and I soon found myself in many embarrassing situations. Not only was I laughed at from the outside by the “mundanes” as I called them , but I could never quite be Gothic enough for the goths I knew. There were intricate lists of what was Gothic and what was a faux pas. One slip up and the label of poser was pasted upon you.
Needless to say I only felt even more alienated in my quest to define my self.

Most goths would say that through being goth they find freedom of expression. But I wonder if that is really true because by creating the rules that they did , they limited themselves.

Is limiting oneself helpful or does it prohibit growth? This life is finite and we can never be all the things that we’d like to. Perhaps limitations do serve as a focus , a way of organizing.

Definitions and labels are parts of the way that we interact with others. That is unchangeable. Not all labels are wrong , for instance the label of our job. Its when we live a definition that our growth is stunted and we become like robots. We can never truly be the epitome of what is , essentially , just a word.The only thing we can be is essentially ourselves.