Unlabelled

I am so glad that I am a grownup! My daughter is in middle school and has to deal with all of the labels that the kids give each other. Sometime over the past couple of years the friends from elementary school have separated into groups. They are labelled as brains, skaters, emos, preps, and jocks. She came home from school the other day very upset that her friends had now labelled her as a poser. Apparently they thought that she was a skater, but her new hair cut identified her as a prep. This meant that she must have been "posing". As she fumed over the immaturity of it all, Stacie Marie said, "Don't label me! I am not a can!"

I am so glad that grownups are past all of that... or are we? Long after our school days, aren't we still being labelled? We must fit into a group - conservative or liberal, Baptist or Methodist, white collar or blue collar, and on it goes.

Well, I am not a can! I don't fit any of these groups. I have my own unique set of beliefs that do not fit into the mold that others try to set. I do not pattern my political opinion after any party. I do not believe that the Church should be separated by denominations. I do believe that I can be anything that I want to be, just as at home doing manual labor as working in an office. There are no lines that should be drawn. No boxes that we should be put in.

Let's rise above the childish practice of labelling people and get to know the individual inside each one of us. Let's not follow the group, but set our own path.