Skip to main content

Feed Them



If we examine our opinions, we can trace the tpuzzle seams between where we've been and what we truly know. I strive to be responsible with my opinions. Feed them a balanced diet of facts, perspective, narrative and whimsy. My opinions don't aspire to be big and strong. Just healthy. They don't yearn to be popular or franchised, just authentic and, hopefully, sturdy.

Even when they appear to match, opinions have unique owners. "Defending" our opinions should mean sketching their lineage: origin, influences, close relatives, familial mergers, adoptions and a nod to the season they spent "discovering themselves." Opinions offer shorthand for our emotions, experiences and unasked questions.

Question your opinions.

Test them in private to see if they can answer for themselves. If they're nervous or insecure. Are they loud? Lazy? Misinformed? People pleasers? How do your opinions respond to inspection or opposition? Are they holding a grudge? Wearing the same jacket from high school? There is no forever mandate on opinions. Quietly retire the ones that don't feed or reflect you, like the ones you boxed up from your parents' home, the ones your ex left all over the place, or the ones you thrifted with friends back in your twenties.

Not only will obsolete or unchecked opinions consume precious space in your thoughts and dealings, the feral ones tend to snap, bite and behave poorly under pressure or in mixed company. I have opinions that fidget, that lean, that refuse to eat their vegetables. The prickly, raggedy and ungenerous opinions are stored on high shelves, carefully labeled and out of the reach of unwitting children, robotic idealogues and unfamiliar dinner tables. They aren't all attractive, but all of my opinions are mine. Even the ones I've absorbed, even the ones under constant review and even the opinions not permitted to join polite conversation, I try to examine and own them all.

I see my opinions for what they are: my distillation of the world I live in ... alongside 7.5 billion other humans and all their #@$& opinions. My opinion doesn't know everything. My opinion isn't always proper or even fair. Sometimes, my opinion only knows that it is. Even in this nascent stage, mushy and vulnerable, my opinions are emblems of my life journey.  How could I not take responsibility for that?
Labels:

Comments

Unknown said…
This Information is so useful for us
Thanks,
Free Commodity Trading Tips
7:18 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dear Deborah Brown Community School ~ It is quite a feat for a small charter to make national news.  It is perversely disappointing, however, to read that a charter school led by two black women is systematically persecuting students of color for celebrating the natural textures of their hair. As an educator, I understand and value the impact of comportment.  Indeed, many ills of the contemporary school environment can be aggravated by lax guidelines on conduct and appearance. Nonetheless, your policies against natural hairstyles levels a much more serious attack against your students.  Rather than teaching them how to be “presentable,” your policy forces the concept of “acceptable” at a disastrously early age. Yes, the school should vigorously mandate “neat,” “modest” and “respectable.” These are essential expectations.  Denying the option of neatly, modestly and respectfully showcasing the heritage of their hair, however, reinforces a wickedly...
4 comments
Read more

Tiger Pause

At eleven, my daughter's fears were getting mauled by a tiger, injured a car crash and being a victim of rape. We talked a lot over the years about sex, sexuality and patriarchy, music lyrics and power, media, shame and the law, discretion, integrity and the whispered fragility of boys. At sixteen, I rocked her as she wept. Her slender shoulders were violent from crying. One of her friends had been raped. Months ago, but was only beginning to share. Months ago, when she started losing weight, stopped hanging out before pre-calc, and kept exhaustion shadowed beneath her makeup contours. We sat crouched on the stairs leading up to my room. She'd called out my name from the dark hall. Her voice, normally expectant and full, had been small and reaching. I peeled away from my husband to find her on the landing, shaking. My daughter felt helpless and hurt that her friend had gone through so much all alone. That she didn't know. Couldn't have known. That it was so unfair....
2 comments
Read more

Standing and Waiting

I always felt for the kids who were picked last for everything. Even now, my chest will ache at some silver screen footage of kids hoping for a pudgy finger to point in their direction, of them standing and waiting for someone to call their name and rescue them from another gym class Debacle. In school, I was seldom among the first kids to get picked for kickball teams and group projects.  I was rarely the last kid standing, either. Falling in the middle, and playground politics being as volatile as they were, I could never be sure if "today might be the Last Kid day." It wasn't until I was finally making my way to one team or the other that the adrenaline and waves of anxiety would subside and I could, once again, acknowledge the existence and plight of other human beings. Relief was quickly replaced by pangs of guilt as the remaining cluster of classmates awkwardly stood and waited for someone to call their name, for someone to rescue them from Last. I thou...
4 comments
Read more