A person who commits a legally unacceptable mistake is a criminal.  A person who has his/her own idea of what is right or wrong is mentally ill. A child who doesn’t listen to, understand or follow instructions that you give is unruly. A person who refuses to budge from what he believes in is a stubborn person. A bereaved woman who has lost her spouse is a sad widow.  Someone who has legally separated from his/her spouse is a divorcee.

Ever stopped to think how we have a label for everyone around us?  Oscar Wilde said, “To define, is to limit” and labelling is close to defining. Do we have the right to limit anyone? THINK. Experiences make people who they are, so why attach these stigmatizing labels?

Will we ever get to that point when we stop attaching labels to people and accept them for what they are? I came across something that Eckhart Tolle, a German author said in his book A New Earth: “The quicker you are in attaching verbal or mental labels to things, people, or situations, the more shallow and lifeless your reality becomes, and the more deadened you become to reality, the miracle of life that continuously unfolds within and around you.” How true!

Can we, for once, try and not label people and make an attempt to know and understand them for what they are? Labels are for things, people deserve more respect.

Anuradha Ganesan has an MBA degree in Human Resources and Marketing and has eclectic interests that range from crafts, sketching, painting, writing, singing. She is also a freelance writer with a Chennai-based magazine and owns a budding-outfit that she calls Ananyah (https://www.facebook.com/Ananyah.Medley), which caters to  her love for making things with her own hands. She  also works full-time with an NGO as a facilitator. She reads avidly, watches movies, surfs the net in her free time and blogs athttp://myrealmofimagination.wordpress.com/.