In this day and age, it seems society has become obsessed with defining every aspect of life with some specific label or category. One only needs to look at someone’s Twitter bio to see that people are a “craft beer enthusiast/Taylor Swift megafan/avid reader/netflix account haver.”
The world may be a more positive place if they instead read “Empathic, passionate, accountable human being.”
People are no longer capable of defining themselves in simple terms. Every aspect of one’s life must allow for them to consider themselves part of some random community. An obsession with inclusion is ruining the unique qualities that should be making people great.
People should not define themselves by the communities to which they belong. Instead, communities should be defined by the people in them. What a person belongs to should never be more important than who he or she is, yet the current trends in society disagree with that.
Someone describing him or herself as a member of a community makes the person viewing them create expectations for what they are like. One may call him or herself a die-hard hockey fan in order to communicate their love for the sport, but someone who does not understand their fandom may view that as them being an advocate for violence and aggression.
The obsession with fitting ourselves into as many silly categories and covering ourselves with as many labels as possible is destructive to the sense of self. Categorization does not create a unique self, but instead just turns someone into the sum of other people’s parts.
People should seek to be defined by positive descriptors, rather than random categories. It is much nicer to be known as “compassionate,” rather than a “computer nerd.” People should seek to be seen in vague sweeping terms, rather than pigeonhole themselves into whatever subculture is the flavor of the month.
Often, the categories people shove themselves into are temporal fads, and when their time passes, an individual will wonder why he or she wanted people to see them that way. Being a “One Directioner” right now may seem awesome, but when the members have faded into obscurity, as boy bands tend to do, it’s probably going to be embarrassing to think you were so obsessed. Not that there is anything wrong with being a fan, but one can easily be a fan of something without it being a label they wear with the utmost pride.
It might be great to be called a craft beer enthusiast today, but a few years down the road when that fad dies and some new form of alcohol is the new hot trend, people are going to be jumping ship to whatever the next wave is.
Our identity may be the only thing in the world that we can completely control. Instead of trying to make sure our identities match up with those of our peers, we should strive to make them unique, so they define who we truly are, not just what we belong to.
Corey Krajewski is a Staff Writer for The Bona Venture. His email is
krajewcj11@bonaventure.edu
