Where do opinions come from? We have so many of them. We're surrounded by them. These opinions about ourselves, about each other, about people we've never met, about people who no longer exist, about the world we live in. Opinions about what the world should look like, about what we should look like, about what other people should look like. About what we should do, about the right thing to do, about what we shouldn't do and about what should be stopped from being done.
Why do we have opinions? Why do we place so much value on them? People who have strong opinions on subjects, especially if they are important ones like war, oppression, politics or human rights, are deemed worthy of at least a certain degree of consideration even if their opinions do not resonate with the common consensus. Yet those who don't hold opinions are often looked at with a sort of pity or disdain or not even noticed at all, much like a homeless man sitting in the midst of a busy street. "Sitting on the fence" is one of the biggest taboos in our society.
But most essentially, what is an opinion? Its an idea, a perspective, a hypothesis on reality at best. Its a way in which we overlay reality with a certain flavor of ourselves.
Opinions are essentially about feeling comfortable with reality. Its our way of knowing without really 'knowing'. Its our way of bridging the gap between reality and possibility, between the known and the unknown. Its our way of feeling useful and meaningful. Reality happens the way it does without our permission. Famine happens, war happens, death happens, shit happens. Also joy happens, peace happens, freedom happens, good things happen. But even all that is just an opinion. The only reality is that Life happens in all its shapes and forms without reason, without permission, without qualification. Opinions create an illusion of control. Because now we can 'pretend' we know, and if we know, well then we can do something about it.
Many argue that a strong opinion is a necessary precursor to definitive action. That you must feel strongly about something to affect change and so forth. In order to take a stand is it necessary to take a mental stand or an ideological stand? In fact, more often than not it seems to work the other way around. That strong opinion stands in the way of definitive long lasting change. The kind of change opinion and ideology affects is not real change, not long lasting transformational change. Its more superficial. A same shit different day sort of mask.
Change is not an ideology its a law of Life. Everything changes and nothing can escape this reality. You, I and the world are changing as we speak. We are aging right now, our cells are dying and regenerating, millions of creatures are perishing and million others being born. Not one single inch of the Universe is static as we speak. Even a human body at rest is a warzone of millions of cells battling bacteria, tissues regenerating and vital communications happening between the various nervous centers.And as you read this, a million stars are dying and a million others being born and countless galaxies are collapsing unto themselves.
Witnessed through the narrow keyhole that is the individual's perception, reality is something we can perceive, breakdown, analyze and address. From this perspective war is evil, fitness is key, cancer is an enemy, organic food is our salvation, pedophiles deserve no sympathy, everyone should vote, high self esteem trumps low self esteem, patriotism is a virtue etc. We slice and dice our experience of Life as we go along craving the tasty bits and balking at the bitter ones. At the very very least we all are expected to formulate our opinions of right and wrong, good and bad. We believe this sort of distinction is the basis of civilized society.
There is a perspective however that seeks to align itself more closely with reality than opinion. This perspective that I'm speaking of is not apathetic, nor devoid of emotion or passion. This perspective doesn't seek to divorce itself from the "evils of the world", it doesn't seek to isolate or distance or detach. This perspective sees the world as a single complex organism and Life as a flux of energy. From this perspective, Life is. Plain and simple. It doesn't qualify any further because it realizes its own limitations to fully grasp the totality.
This perspective recognizes that the individual is only a single infinitesimal aspect of the whole. Yet, it also sees that the individual embodies the potentiality of the whole, much like a single seed in a fruit on a tree contains the potentiality of an entire tree within it. This perspective grasps that the individual is not an isolated entity but rather an instance of infinite circumstances, energies and matter coinciding at a single moment, for a single moment.
It sees that everything is hopelessly intertwined. That birth brings death but also death brings birth. That oppression leads to freedom until freedom turns into oppression. It sees people put more stock in their ideas and beliefs than in realities - as a result they live in memories past and future aspirations. It sees that we've convinced ourselves that life is a survival game, that happiness is some future state, that people are inherently untrustworthy and that the planet we live on belongs to us - to destroy or save as we deem fit.
But most essentially this perspective admits that thoughts and ideas, from the loftiest to the most base, are only figments of imagination. All our beliefs, our opinions and who we think we are is the stuff of dreams.
This perspective doesn't hold on to opinions strongly and seldom feels the need to enforce its will. Although many people dismiss it as a dithering, an indecisiveness or a "sitting on the fence" it is quite the opposite. Consider the metaphor of a tightrope walker traversing a line hundreds of feet in the air. On one side lies a dark chasm which contains all the base traits of evil, apathy, lethargy, ignorance, hate etc, On the other lies the equally dark chasm of virtue, goodness, compassion, righteousness. Separating these two is the fine line of reality that the tightrope walker traverses one step at a time with utmost attention. If his attention wanders towards the chasm of virtue and he begin to think himself virtuous he falls, and vice versa if he identifies with a vice, he falls. Each fall in the end is only a figment of his imagination because when he snaps back to reality, there is only the tightrope and the one step he is taking.
This is a perspective that is intensely open and prepared to respond to whatever reality presents. It is capable of action that is unmotivated by agenda and compassion that doesn't serve some self purpose. It is a perspective that knows that it can never really know and it is at peace with that. While opinions may exist it does not give its allegiance to these opinions allowing them to exist freely within the space of its own awareness.
