We have transformed ourselves into entities who live LABELS instead of life. That is, a certain kind of tag or label gets incorporated into our software, operating system, (that also without our knowledge) by the socio-cultural milieu around us and we get busy living it.
For example, on an occasion or two a person publically loses his temper. Once he is settled people around him will tell two things either they will justify what he did and tell him that what he did in that situation was correct or they will TAG or LABEL him as “an angry or volatile person”. They will come and repeatedly tell him that he is an angry person, they will remind him of various real and hypothetical events of recent and remote past to prove their point (of course there also is a third and an extremely rare breed of people who will present the truth as it is & help the person to reflect on it, but they have not been mentioned here for the shear lack of their numbers and rarity), and voila we have an angry young man between us. Now, there will arise situations where he does not actually feel precipitously angry or angry enough to exhibit the same. But soon enough his “angry young man” TAG (LABEL) would kick into action and even without his knowledge or control he will burst into anger tantrums and will regret having done so later. This, now, will become a vicious circle. He lives with a guilt of unnecessarily throwing temper tantrums along with the constant fear of being unable to control his temper when situation demands him to.
This truly is a difficult and yet a comic situation at the same time. It is difficult because this person would repeatedly make a fool out himself by losing his temper unnecessarily and then would keep regretting (feeling guilty) the same and it is comic because he does not realize that it is not he who kicks in the irritability storm rather the LABEL (TAG) (given to him by the society), which sadly he believes to be himself (it is his identification with the LABEL), that makes him behave the way he does.
Another example, a person who has been very straightforward and honest gets into trouble repeatedly because of his straightforward ways. People around him start RE-PROGRAMMING him. They tell him all possible imaginable and unimaginable nonsense about how corrupt this world and these times are, they tell him how all these noble values are only meant to be enshrined in religious and moral books never supposed to be practiced in real life etc etc.. This young man, (unknowingly though) due to continuous socio-cultural RE-PROGRAMMING, TAGS (LABELS) honesty and straightforwardness of his inner nature (operating software, mind) as “socially useless” to a certain extent “harmful to own self”.
Whenever a certain situation arises his mind tries to respond naturally with its innate honesty and straightforwardness but this process is immediately taken over and shut down by the newly implanted LABEL of “socially useless” and “harmful to own self” pasted over honesty and straightforwardness. These LABELS now force him to behave with deception and dishonesty which of course he regrets later. But, as if under the influence of some invisible force, again and again he is forced to behave in this fashion and then regret having done that, since this is against his innate nature until he becomes totally insensitive and corrupted to a point where he himself becomes an ardent believer of the lies such as “all these noble values are only meant to be enshrined in religious and moral books never supposed to be practiced in real life” etc.
This is what is meant by LIVING THE LABELS and NOT THE LIFE. This is the Cage of our own self imposed limitations. This is what was intended to be expressed by the lines “Now the child is crippled, instead of expressing himself freely and exploring life, as he was doing until now, he is forced to live life out of the limitations implanted into its mind”. And it is here that the subtle FORK IN THE ROAD (CHOICE) comes into light.
