Labels vs. Identity | 0:01:10 – 0:03:08 (119 Seconds)
0:01:10
I’m really excited to be back with you today and I want to expand on the last podcast when I started talking about the difference between labels and identity, and I want to remind everyone that labels are what others put upon us and identity is how we describe who we are, and I think the danger with labels is that when we label each other. We not only assume that label’s true, which is basically a story that I’m making up about you we treat each other as if the label is true, and the danger with that is that not everyone fits that label and those labels are created based on the behavior of some people within each group. And so when we think about the wars that are happening between Russia and Ukraine, when that one started and Ukrainians got labeled something, russians got labeled something and everybody within those labels was looked at the same. And it’s no different than what happened after 9-11, when everyone who was labeled as either from the Middle East were hurt, killed, talked poorly about, blamed as if they were the ones who drove the planes into those buildings. And that’s not the case for everyone in that group case for everyone in that group.
Challenging Society’s Role in Violence | 0:06:53 – 0:08:29 (97 Seconds)
0:06:53
And we have a choice right now, as a society, to really start to think about what’s my role in this and what is it that I want to achieve. When I look at our own country, in the United States, and I see the political system and how dysfunctional it is right now and the amount of hurt and pain that it’s causing people, it just reminds me that this is not something that’s happening in some faraway country. It’s happening on a lot of levels right here in our own country People not being able to speak their mind, people not being able to speak to the safety and humanity of all groups without being told that you’re against me or there’s something wrong with you, once again being labeled. And so why can’t I be against the killing of children, families or elder who identify as palestinians or israelis, who identify as russians or ukrainians? Killing of innocent people is not okay ever. All of our mass shootings are killings of innocent people who were just doing what they did in the course of the day and there’s no way, as a human being, that I can justify that and say there’s some rationale or in some way it was okay for a nine-year-old child to be shot and killed, for an elder who was just going to work or taking care of something or somebody for an elder who was just going to work or taking care of something or somebody.
Restorative Conversations and Understanding Humanity | 0:13:23 – 0:15:06 (103 Seconds)
0:13:23
Every other day I get a call from one of my clients to say can you come in and do a mediation? Can you come in and do a restorative conversations. I have a couple people who are really struggling with each other, or something happened between a group of people and they refused to talk to each other, and so I sit with them and I facilitate these conversations and once they get past the labels and the divisiveness and the misunderstandings, they start to understand the motivation behind it, what triggered them, what caused them to think something about the other person understanding the labels. And so I’ve seen people who had these barriers put up that once they broke them down, they were able to see the humanity that each person had and all of a sudden they realized that they had more connecting points than dividing points. And I think that as a society, we need to really start thinking about how are we more connected than divided? We need to really start thinking about how are we more connected than divided? How are you actually my neighbor as a member of my community, versus that person that I’m going to label, and I don’t like those people, so I’m going to treat you that way. That’s not really an identity approached relationship and it can be very divisive. So I want to finish with this I worked with a facilitator when I was about 25 years old in Boulder, where I lived at the time, and her name was Lillian Roybal Rose.
Creating a Connected, Humane World | 0:16:59 – 0:19:36 (157 Seconds)
0:16:59
I think the challenge is that when we walk away and we interact with somebody who’s like that person that we walked away from, then we say, oh yeah, there’s another one. Well, that’s not really another one. That’s a new human being that has their own unique identity that we’re probably not taking the time to get to know. So, of course, whatever our mindset gives us is what we’ll bring into our life, whether it’s real or not. It could be completely the opposite of what our mindset is telling us and we won’t be able to see it, and I’ve had a life experience of doing that, where I had a mindset about a particular person, and when I got to know them, I realized that they were a completely different human being than my label, and so I just want you all to think about your role in creating a more connected planet, and I also want to say that I’m really excited because part of what I have always done is well. I haven’t always done this for a good part of my life. What I’ve done is recognize where we are and then created something to counter it. So I want to share with you what I’ve created to counter this divisiveness. I just finished an app, with the help of a lot of people, called Connected, and it’s spelled C-N-C-T-D, and the objective of the Connected app is to create a worldwide community of practitioners, of people who want to grow, are tired of being divided and realize that there’s more that connects us than divides us. It’s a free app, and within the app are some videos and personal growth modules that will support some of the conversations that we’re having and will, for sure, support your own personal growth if you choose to do them. There’s some around being aware of your biases, some around how to work through conflict, how to have difficult conversations, and my goal in that is the reason I do this is I want to create a more humane world, and being connected is the only way that we can do that. We’ve been divided long enough. It’s time to get connected, it’s time to stay connected, it’s time to see our shared humanity and how we move through this really challenging time that we’re all in, and I would love to see you all in the app.
