Being Defined Is a Limit

The first time someone described me with a single word, I was grateful. Finally, I thought, someone understands. It took years to realise that the word was not a key but a cage with the door left open - and that I had been the one standing inside it.

We love definitions because they are restful. A thing that is labelled does not need to be examined again. But a person who is defined stops being a question and starts being an answer, and answers do not grow.

I notice it in the city too. San Francisco is endlessly described - one thing by its defenders, another by its critics - and both are true and both are incomplete. The label is not the place. It is a map, and a map is not the territory.

I am trying to resist being neatly defined, by others and by myself. Not to be mysterious, but to stay unfinished. A limit is useful. But I would rather be a horizon than a limit.