Booth 1

Sable Booth

Rohan

English

14 January 2021

Stuck in the Box Reflection

Our society uses labels to help understand who a person is, some can be good and some

can be bad. I think that most labels are created by the people around us. It is a topic that seems to

be more relevant now than in the past. Many people disagree with labels and believe that people

shouldn’t be labeled from the outside without knowing what is on the inside.

I believe that most of the time we are assigned roles by other people, especially in the

beginning of our lives. We accept the roles given to us at a young age because we don’t

understand a lot about how the world works and children don’t know who they will grow up to

be yet. As people get older, they tend to start to choose their own roles when they know what

they want to do with their lives or if they understand what their life journey is.

A lot of people don’t agree with labels because they are based on what is on the outside

of a person and what the person shows. However, there is a lot more to people than what they

show to the world. We keep a lot to ourselves because we don’t want to feel judged for

something that might not be “normal” about us compared to what society portrays as “normal”.

We also keep things inside because we don’t feel comfortable having everyone know everything

about us. Society has come to be a very judgmental environment where people don’t feel

comfortable with being open to others about their lives. Even if we don’t want to admit it, I

believe that we all care to some extent about what others think about us. When we make close
 Booth 2

connections with people and form a trusting relationship, that is when we tend to open up our

boxes more and let them see what is on the inside.

The question “who are you?” seems to be asked a lot, and I never know how to answer it

completely. I can explain myself with my labels and say that I am a daughter, sister, teammate,

and friend, but without those labels it makes the question a lot harder for me to answer. Without

using labels, I have to look inside to know who I truly am. I have always been more of a shy

person so I keep a lot of things to myself and don’t like to open up to others very much. This has

made me realize that I depend on the labels given to me a lot more than I thought. I haven’t lived

enough of my life to create my own labels so i continue to go with the ones given to me.