Words and Labels

 Is the right turn the right way to go right now? This world is full of words and each of them has many meanings. In one sentence there are ways to use right three times and each of them means a slightly different definition based on how it is seen in the context of the texts. That is how things are. We give labels and titles to things and try to describe those things with words. Sometimes we give a tile to something just because we feel that that is what best fits what we are looking at. Even Columbus made that mistake when he first landed here in the Native Americas. He called the natives India, and it has stuck all these years even though they have never even been to India.

Why do labels and words hurt? They have so many definitions that we should be able to interpret them in many ways but stick. They slowly try to define what people are, and we sometimes change to become what people call us. Labels change a person's culture and stick them in a box of what that word means.

Why do words' meanings change how we think? Because words are sometimes all we have. They can paint a picture of beauty and take us to faraway places. At the same time, words can also create fear and mistrust, changing things with just a different use of a word. World culture is built on communication and how people talk to each other. The more we can share and understand each other, the more unified we are.

Words and labels at the same time, people use can be used as a tool to separate us. Labeling something as bad or something that is to be feared can be used to pin people against each other. Sometimes we label people with things that we need to fear or push away by using a word that the culture has decided it doesn't like. All the words we avoid saying have meanings and, at some point, people don't care about what they mean. They were just trying to describe something. Then the culture decided what it was describing could be used as a way to hurt someone.

These words that we use to hurt people, can stick as labels and define a person's life. The examples I will use may not cause too much damage to people, but they are words that change how someone is seen by others. The first example is one many of us have probably heard. This label is thrown around in schools a lot. It's a simple word and its definition is a person of low intelligence. Most of the time it is used, people say this to describe a mistake they made, like I'm such an idiot. Most of the time they say this is because they realize that they made a mistake, and it seems so simple on how to avoid it. Sadly, when people say that someone is an idiot, they start to believe it's the truth. When we believe something, we start to change. When we stop changing, then slowly we truly become the idiots others believe them to be. Another example of this is the word gay, and it is thrown around a lot as a joke between friends that know each other really well. Some people use it to describe themselves, but when others start to just label someone as gay, it is very likely that they will start to act that way. Labels create emotions and have cultures around them where people are called things they are likely to become.

The saying "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never harm me" we all have heard hundreds of times but when we are labeled with a word it changes how things are seen. They describe the culture people see around us. When someone's culture is defined by words even if it's not meant to be it can change how people see us for centuries like the Native Americans.