Creating a World Without Labels
Yesterday, a friend brought to my attention a powerful and moving public service announcement about the stigma people suffering from mental illness face every day. The spot is from the non-profit organization Bring Change 2 Mind and was directed by Ron Howard.
It’s hard not to be moved by the message being presented in the piece, if not appreciating how difficult it must have been for those who volunteered to participate in this announcement to walk around wearing a shirt that tells the world what ails them inside. The piece got me thinking about our tendency to not only put labels on people suffering from mental illness, but on anyone who differs from us in some fashion or another.
Granted, it’s in our nature to categorize and catalogue the world around us as it’s the most effective way for us to understand and relate to it. The problem, though, is that we don’t create labels that allow us to view those different from us as being simply another facet on the prism of our collective humanity. Instead, our labels serve only to create rifts, to draw lines in the sand to separate people in terms of who we see as being one of “us” as opposed to one of “them”. As the commercial above demonstrates, the labels we often use serve only to define people based on what they are, instead of who they are.
Perhaps if we stopped looking at what makes us different from each other, and instead focus on the common bonds we share, we might finally get what truly matters in life.
To learn more about mental illness and how you can help bring a stop to the stigma associated with it, visit BringChange2Mind.org. And let’s start the process of creating a world without labels.
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Deb Bruser, RespectfulWorkplace, Kendall Thiessen and others. Kendall Thiessen said: Stop labeling and find our common ground http://bit.ly/1TUWvS Great Blog by @TanveerNaseer [...]
[...] Tanveer Naseer urges us to “Create a World Without Labels,” in this post which includes compelling video about experiences of people with mental illness. [...]