A Beautiful Mind!

What if I were to tell you that I am Opinionated? You would judge me. Some of you (let’s call it group Radical) would say that I am hard-hearted and obstinate. Some (group Casual) would say that I think clearly and have a strong opinion about things I talk about. And the remaining (group Whatever) would be indifferent. Now what if I were to change my stand and tell you that I don’t have an opinion about anything? Again you would judge me (that’s all what we do; Judge People). Only this time, it may so happen that you might have shifted from Radical to Casual or may be to Whatever group. And to be honest and truthful to you, there exists no science that would figure out which group would you be jumping off to. The reason being you have your own "opinion"!

Having an opinion is not a bad thing, but getting glued to one is. You read about something, you hear about it and then when you "think" that you have enough of information to form an opinion you go ahead and do it. We all do that, and there is nothing wrong with it. It’s good to have an opinion. Isn’t that’s what makes us human that we are?! Having an opinion is an integral part of our nature. Now here is the real test; what would you do if someone makes you jump into a conversation and challenges your opinion to prove it wrong? What would you do in such situation? You would:

Option 1: Retaliate with the hardest argument that you can to demolish the person standing against you?

Option 2: Go into the conversation with open mind and if you feel, down the line, that the argument made by someone else has some credibility associated with it, you would accept that you were wrong?

Option 3: Be indifferent?

Before we try and unravel, let’s see what all is it that contributes toward holding one thought dearer while berating other. Whenever you make an opinion you would like to believe that you have reached to this point all due nothing but your rationality and your intellectuality. But the fact remains that other irrational factors has equal involvement. While the opinion is in the making it arises from: your knowledge about the topic, your values, circumstances, feelings and experience. If you think hard enough you would realize that every human being, at any given point in time, hold these things. And everything that we do is influenced, if not driven, though subliminally, by them. Now, for the time being let’s make a hypothesis that whatever we have discussed till now is true (I am saying hypothesis because some of you would not agree with me on this, but even if you don’t please try to walk along for the sake of fun). Here is the fun part; if you give the list a hard look you would notice that all that’s up there is subjected to change with time. You read, you talk about the topic to increase your knowledge and you know a lot more than you were aware of before. Values are a tricky business. It changes along with the situation, e.g. Lying is not a good thing, but what if it is in the best interest of everyone at that moment? Circumstances and feelings change every split-second.  And as they say, the number of gray hair is directly proportional to the mistakes (they call it experience) that we have made!

So now my question is, if all the factors that have helped you reach to an opinion are variable and are subjected to change with time, is it a good idea to get stuck and be adamant about your school of thoughts? Would it not be in your best interest to be open-minded? I know it’s real hard to flip 180 and go ahead to admit that you were wrong, but isn’t that what shows the character?! You can go along and debate your opponent out with you callous arguments, but in my opinion that is the worst thing to do if you really wish to explore the subject in discussion (of-course with an exception for court room trails and a debate competitions).

Ultimately, it’s in your hand what you would like yourself to be perceived as: The Great Debater or someone who has A Beautiful Mind!

~Abbey

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