Day: February 22, 2011

I was in High School and the assignment was to create a quick drawing to represent who you are. The teacher did not mean for it to be an important or profound assignment, it was the prelude to a guessing game activity. I was completely unable to comply with the request. I knew I could draw a picture that would allow other students to guess who I was, but somehow I became emotionally tangled in the idea that such an image would be a false representation of who I was. I felt like a person of infinite possibility and to draw an image would be to show only a sliver of who I was. Anything I drew would be boxing me in, limiting my possibilities, and ultimately be a lie. My teacher was quite frustrated with me. He wanted quick drawings, not an identity crisis.

I have always disliked being pigeon-holed or labeled. As a child I claimed all the colors as my favorites. As a teen I entered high school with the deliberate intention to re-define myself in the eyes of my peers. Later I had to undo all that work and re-connect myself with my true interests. It was only well in to my adult years that I learned that I did not have to constantly challenge other people, daring them to accept all the aspects of who I am. Only in the last five years have I learned that allowing other people to categorize me for their convenience is a courtesy I can extend which has absolutely no bearing on my life or what I accomplish. I have an array of labels to describe me, but none of them define me completely. Having lots of labels means I can display whichever one is appropriate to the social situation.

I spent this past weekend at LTUE, a symposium on Science Fiction and Fantasy. It is always interesting to me to see what panels I am placed on, because it is a reflection of how I am viewed by the local writing community. I had one panel on organization, one on parenting, and two on business/financial things. It is endlessly amusing to me that I, the person who picked a humanities major in college because it required no math, am now teaching basic accounting and business structure. Yet these are things I know very well because I had to learn them. I think it is encouraging for creative people to know that organization and structure can be learned. I love teaching about these things. They are good things. However I am more than just business, organizational, mommy lady. I would love to teach classes on story, blogging, and creative non-fiction. I believe I could do these well, but I don’t yet have the credentials to back up my belief. I don’t have visible evidence of my capability and thus that is not how I am thought of when the time comes to arrange panels or presentations.

The need to categorize is built into human brains. We have to be able to file experiences and dismiss them or else we will be in a constant state of mental overload. One of the primary drives of early childhood is the creation of categories. No one wants to examine each and every fork we encounter to determine it’s qualities and use. We need to be able to label it quickly as a fork and move on to something else. We do this same thing with people. We have to. Every person in the world is a being of infinite possibility, but contemplating that for every cashier at the grocery store and every person you drive past would overwhelm. Thus to me the young lady with a head full of hopes and dreams is just a cashier. To her I am just a customer. This is good and necessary, no matter how much I hated it as a teenager.

I think I worked so hard to dodge categories because I was afraid to be trapped in them. This is a very real problem. Sometimes the imposed categories of others can limit a person’s potential, particularly if the categories are applied by people in power. A child may have a very difficult time breaking free of being “the smart one” if that is how parents and neighbors see her. I have friends who make a full time living at writing and yet are still treated as if they’ve picked up an amusing hobby. This can be infuriating and emotionally crushing. Repeated application of a particular category can make even a being of infinite possibility accept limitation. I am in a very fortunate position. None of the categories that other people apply to me block my pathways to my goals. I am not barred from my dreams by being too female, white, Mormon, maternal, scattered, reliable, messy, or any other category. Fighting against the perceptions of those who have power over your dreams is hard. The first step is to not accept the limitations of the categories assigned by other people.

I never did draw a picture for that class game. I sat out while the other students played. Several months later I realized what my visual representation should be. It was a dandelion puff scattering seeds on the wind. All of the seeds had the ability to sprout into a new plant and they had the potential to travel far. It still was not a perfect representation, but I liked it because it represented possibility rather than limitation. The fact that real-world dandelions are often treated as weeds was perhaps a meta-commentary upon the fate of people who defy categorization. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I just loved to remember blowing the dandelion puffs, watching seeds sail off into the blue, and wondering where they would land. I gave my teacher a hand drawn picture of a dandelion puff months after the assignment was forgotten by everyone else. He gave me an odd look, not quite sure where I fit. I felt quite good about that.