Miscalculations

iStock photo from Internet

Learning a second language is, according to scientists and researchers, good for your brain health. Six weeks away from my 72nd birthday, I certainly hope that this information carries more weight than opinion or research funded by a self interested party! This morning, as I rubbed my mildly arthritic knee and decided I could do without my cane maybe for the whole day, I realized that as humans we are each rather like a suitcase that has travelled the world. One of the new words that I learned in this past couple of weeks was ‘maleta’ meaning suitcase. For the world traveler, their suitcase, like this screen shot I just took, just may have labels of countries they have passed through. I don't know if that practice is still a part of travel, but if not should it be? How does that relate to my arthritic knee? Well, it is my body's newest ‘label’ for this oddly shaped suitcase that walks and talks.

Those of us that have experience, past or present, with any health care system are expert at sticking labels on everyone. For good reason, at least for physicians, this does create a certain order for diagnosing and offering treatment for patients in their care. However, in general ~ health care or in the grocery store ~ many of us have developed the pretty bad habit of sticking a label on someone’s behaviour or what they look like. I am as guilty of this as anyone else. Having retired only eight months ago, sadly it is still very reflexive for me. Why do we label folks? Is it to create some kind of understanding of someone we don’t even know? Is it to give name calling a sort of, clinical and therefore acceptable, turn of phrase? Has it become so normalized that the seriousness of actual diagnoses, and thus, care and treatment, is pushed aside? Physicians are to make diagnoses with all the tools and knowledge at their disposal. Miscalculation or even a quasi diagnosis of an individual by the general population or maybe a retired nurse, may only direct someone to helpful solutions and people. The many awareness campaigns and slogans can also direct us to solutions rather than just slapping an unhelpful sticker on each others suitcases. Our suitcases ~ las maletas in Spanish ~ need to be packed with helpful solutions to problems that may have arisen on our travels through this life. Changing this bad habit of mine is like unlearning and paying attention. Learning a new language, may or may not be a solution for any future label that I may be given. Regardless, it is fun and has opened my world not just to speaking a new language, but listening to Spanish music, conversing in Spanish and celebrating a rainbow of words. (I am definitely not fluent yet….)

“People are too complicated to have simple labels.”

~ Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass