Claiming My Voice: From the darkness, the light emerges.

I come from a loooooong line of people who like to talk. Oh sure, there are some that are quiet (like my son) but most are talkers. And the thing about talkers is that, while they may have facts and research behind them, most talkers are giving their opinion about the thing they have facts/research about. Or my favorite is that they have an opinion so they go find facts to prove your opinion wrong.

When I was in college, on the first day of a Philosophy class I had, the professor started off his talk and honestly, I don’t remember what he was saying about Philosophy but he used the term “mere opinion.” And I immediately shot up my hand and we had a heated debate about opinions and whether they were “mere” or not. My opinion on opinions was that they are never “mere” and felt denigrated by his phrase. He, on the other hand, argued that all opinions are “mere” because they are rarely based on fact and when the person based it on fact, it was still just their opinion. Let’s look at the word “mere”. Merriam-Webster’s opinion on the word is that it means, “being nothing more than.” So what I heard him saying (because I’m self-centered this way) is “Your ideas are nothing more than opinion.” Of course I was offended! In some ways I think I believed that my thoughts (opinions) were always valuable and right. I never convinced him that opinions are deeply important. He didn’t convince me that my opinion (and some other’s) weren’t profoundly impactful.

Fast forward some (cough) amount of years and I see his point more clearly. I regularly hear people state their opinion as fact because they can site proof, and I am even guilty of it sometimes. I had a talk one time with a friend and his argument for his opinion was that it was the same opinion as everyone’s therefor it must be truth and not opinion. My argument was that not everyone agreed AND that societal agreement about an opinion doesn’t make it so. My favorite example is that if I held up a piece of paper and asked 100 people what color it was, I’d probably get 10 different answers. I wouldn’t get a hundred answers because we are limited by the names we have given colors. For example we’ll use my car. The maker calls that color “Mirage Green”, I call it “light teal.” I’ve had people also call it “blue” and “green.” Heck, one guy even called it “kinda yellowish green/blue.” It doesn’t change what color my car is based on what it is called. Its color is the truth. What we call it is our perception (opinion?) even though we could argue that what the maker calls it is the truth.

Earlier this year I lost a friend because I gave him my unsolicited opinion on his life. He either didn’t want to hear my opinion at all or he didn’t want to hear that opinion. So I have had to look (again) at who I want to be in the world. There is a huge part of me that thinks some people come to me to hear my opinion (or my experience, strength and hope if you will). I know that some do because they tell me so. But what I’ve really been looking at is where/when do I speak my opinion? It’s ALL opinion. Even if I can back up my opinion with facts, my thoughts are not necessarily right for this other person. Where do I not share my opinion and lead them to their own? That is really where I want to be.

Yesterday I was hanging out with some friends and one of them said they were working on “restraint of tongue and pen.” She went on to say that what she is really trying to do is to pause before speaking to decide if what she wants to say is just her opinion. I know…there is that cliche saying about asking yourself, is it kind? Is it necessary? blah blah blah. I want to start taking the time to ask myself, “Is the response I’m formulating mere opinion and where can I help this person find their own?”

So here is my reminder and your permission (if you know me IRL)…If I am giving you solicited or unsolicited advice based on my opinion (especially if you are done hearing it), please feel free to call me out and ask if I am being who I want to be.

And just so we are clear, the beauty of a blog is that I get to spout all my opinions, and my opinions of my experiences.

One last little joke I heard about opinions…Opinions are like butt holes: Everyone has one and they all stink!

Thanks again ChatGPT for the image. It both makes me happy and terrifies me how accurately it assesses my ask and gives me an image that is SO close to what I wanted.