A label is a mask life wears.

We put labels on life all the time. "Right," "wrong," "success," "failure," "lu
cky," "unlucky," may be as limiting a way of seeing things as "diabetic," "epile
ptic," "manic-depressive," or even "invalid." Labeling sets up an expectation o
f life that is often so compelling we can no longer see things as they really ar
e. This expectation often gives us a false sense of familiarity toward somethin
g that is really new and unprecedented. We are in relationship with our expecta
tions and not with life itself.
Which brings up the idea that we may become as wounded by the way in which we se
e an illness as by the illness itself. Belief traps or frees us. Labels may be
come self-fulfilling prophecies. Studies of voodoo death suggest that in certai
n circumstances belief may even kill.
We may need to take our labels and even our experts far more lightly. Some year
s ago I served on the dissertation committee of a woman in the Midwest, who was
studying spontaneous remission of cancer. Among the people who answered her ad
in the paper asking for people who thought they may have had an unusual experien
ce of healing was a farmer who had done exceptionally well despite a dire progno
sis.

On the phone one evening, she told me about him. She felt his outcome was relat
ed to his attitude. "He didn't take it on," she said.
Confused, I asked her if he had denied that he had cancer. No, she said, he had
not. He had just taken the same attitude toward his physician's prognosis that
he took towards the words of the government soil experts who analyzed his field
s. As they were educated men, he respected them and listened carefully as they
showed him the findings of their tests and told him that the corn would not grow
in this field. He valued their opinions. But, as he told my student, "A lot o
f the time the corn grows anyway."
In my experience, a diagnosis is an opinion and not a prediction. What would it
be like if more people allowed for the presence of the unknown, and accepted th
e words of their medical experts in this same way? The diagnosis is cancer. Wh
at that will mean remains to be seen.
Like a diagnosis, a label is an attempt to assert control and manage uncertainty
. It may allow us the security and comfort of a mental closure and encourage us
not to think about things again. But life never comes to a closure; life is pr
ocess, even mystery. Life is known only by those who have found a way to be com
fortable with change and the unknown. Given the nature of life, there may be no
security, but only adventure.