What's Your Opinion?

Isn’t it amazing how we debate, argue, and even physically fight  each other about something we believe, which, in reality, is somebody else’s opinion. There was a time when people believed the person who told them that the world was flat, and now we not only believe differently, but many of us have accepted the opinion that there are countless other worlds and even other galaxies to examine and explore. Yet, in spite of all the new stuff we’re hearing and believing, it’s still somebody else’s opinion. Nonetheless, we have accepted some of these opinions as truth, and are willing to do whatever it takes to prove their validity.

Check out this passage from page 15 of Ralph Ellison’s novel, ‘Invisible Man’, that reads like this.  “All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was.  I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer.”  Does that hit home for you? It certainly does for me cause it’s so much easier to believe spomebody else’s stuff, than to take time out and actually decide for myself what it is that I believe.

We all have opinions, and it’s to our very well being that these diverse points of view don’t fall on deaf ears. But we have to receive the words we hear with discernment, and perhaps formulate our own in order to create an additional means for dealing with the situations that confront and subsequently affect us all.  My contention is that we don’t just accept someone else’s opinion. We examine it, we study its validity, and then we determine how it will be useful to the agenda and consciousness that we’ve hopefully established and developed for ourselves.

Let’s agree to disagree about other peoples’ opinions. Not just about the opinions themselves, but about how we plan to address them.

I’ll holla…

To comment or respond please click on the word comments at the bottom of this page, or email me at grace.calvin187@gmail.com