Every morning, before I even start my day, I tell myself to ignore opinions and focus on the goal.

Then I open my phone to check social media. It’s my usual routine. Within minutes, the goal is losing to the overwhelming opinions and biases in my feed.

It took me a while to realize that opinions chase me no matter where I go. Being exposed to them blinds me to my goal. It’s like having my own lamp but not putting it to use when too much mist is already around me.

The goal doesn’t work that way. It knows its value, so it doesn’t chase anyone. It attracts the people brave enough to get past the opinions just to reach it.

My goal is to be successful at something. I’m still figuring out what that something is, and that’s honest uncertainty. It’s knowing what I want, doing it consistently, and letting the result answer what my end goal really is. But if I had to name my current goal, it’s consistently doing what I love, regardless of opinions.

That’s the irony I want to unpack. If I really know how negative opinions affect me, why do I still get bothered by opinions on the internet? I guess opinions really do bring unwelcome emotions.

The Thoughts That Build Up

The thing about opinions is that they’re the thoughts that build up during and after arguments. They’re the accumulation of unanswered questions and almost-answered reasons, from every argument I’ve had with myself and with other people. They force me to look inward and outward at the same time. That gets tiring, especially when both sides are loud.

I’ve never really liked arguments. Not because they don’t matter, but because an argument is one of the ways I try to feel understood. And honestly, I would love to be understood.

I think we all want to give ourselves more understanding than we give to others. It’s just that we unintentionally give too much of our energy to understanding someone else’s point of view, and forget that we need that understanding ourselves.

Still, I don’t think arguments are always a bad thing. They can end well for both people. It depends on how well we can control ourselves.

Arguments are as common and inevitable as opinions, because everyone has free will. We’re free to do things, especially when we’re in control of our own actions, behavior, and emotions. But free will isn’t a reason to do something just because we want to. It also means weighing many factors, like time, circumstances, and how we integrate it. For me, it also comes down to whether I have the strength to handle the consequences of speaking my mind.

I’ve come to realize that being understood is one of the most draining things to find externally. I hate arguing with other people because so much of it is out of my control.

Being understood is seeing what’s shown on the surface and accepting it for what it is. Being noticed is seeing both the surface and the reason behind it. The difference is how willing a person is to know you. It’s what we do when we really want to know something: observing a person on a deeper level, not based on the emotions or feelings shown when something happens, but knowing them regardless of those. They should exist together all the time. When one overpowers the other, something ends up feeling less than it should.

Arguing Internally

So I started arguing internally. Not in a crazy way. It’s more like a debate between my calm self and my chaotic self. My chaotic self would always try to defend that an aggressive tone is acceptable, while my calm self would always try to find a way to let both sides know the real reason behind such reactions.

The funny thing is that it gets resolved every time, because both sides are in my control, and who doesn’t want things to be resolved? Not right away, though. Most of them took more time and reflection to reach a point of understanding myself.

I understand myself enough to know that I get impulses through anger and excitement. And impulse can feel like a smart move. It’s very good at making a decision look agreeable when I’m already full of emotions.

Listening to my own side of the debate also showed me how an opinion builds itself. It’s often just a passing thought that keeps resurfacing, because I always find proof the moment I start holding it.

Say I dislike someone who cuts me off in every conversation. So I start looking for ways to prove it. I already decided before the conversation even started that they were going to cut me off. That became a verdict. Turns out I was adjusting myself all along just to make my point. I won’t even notice anything wrong with that, because it looks like the situation is agreeing with my opinion. These days, I notice myself stopping, and giving the other person a chance to show whether my verdict is even true.

So I ask myself: am I really willing to accept the opposite of that opinion? Or am I just stubborn enough to believe in only one thing?

The answer is the stubborn one. I know it the moment my brain starts creating reasons to defend instead of questions to understand the situation better. It made me really believe that reactions happen before reflections.

Why Being Right Matters

All of this makes me wonder why being right matters so much to us. Opinions are never fully right or wrong. But people are so focused on being right that everything turns more chaotic than it should be.

In my experience, being right feels like doing something impactful, not just for myself but for others. That’s why I care so much about it. At some point in life, I want to control my own narrative. It’s also because we grew up knowing that being wrong is the result of a lack of awareness, and being wrong can already prove other people’s verdicts.

At the end of the day, we believe mistakes show that we’re human. But we also have a fear of admitting them, not to ourselves, but to others. Admitting a wrongdoing can add more to what’s already there than resolve anything at all. So what can admitting resolve? It can be the most fulfilling thing, but if it lands on the wrong person, we can only hope it still ends well for us, regardless of what the other end does.

Consequences never ask for our permission. They’re based on the actions, feelings, and thoughts we gave to the other end. That’s why the only weapon we’ll ever need is the strength to do better and to take responsibility for all our actions.

Because if we don’t even know who we really are, how can we really know which ones are masks? We end up wearing one and thinking it’s who we are.

That pull to be right is also what happens to me in conversations. In most of the conversations I have, I agree. But then the other party speaks up, and suddenly I feel like a kid who’s lost in the wilderness, because I realize I don’t have my own answer yet.

Room to Think

When I try to prove a point, I usually say something no one was welcoming to hear. It’s like answering a question no one else would have answered. It wasn’t wrong, it was just too unrealistic, especially for someone who doesn’t really understand my stance. And to be honest, I’m still learning how to articulate my own thoughts too.

When my point isn’t landing the way I wanted it to, I stop the conversation midway. Not because I’m tired, but because I don’t want to answer with conviction something I haven’t even confirmed myself yet. I don’t think words are enough of an answer. It’s mostly actions that give the best answers. I stop talking and reflect on the whole thing to see the bigger picture.

Once an opinion is out in the open, it’s not in our control what the reactions will be. We just have to keep moving and learning. Because the worst thing we can do when the reactions are worse is to do worse than before. Either we stop in our tracks and stay stuck in the past, or we move forward and keep that experience as a lesson, meant to happen so we could learn something worth holding onto.

Stopping doesn’t close my mind. It gives me room to think.

After sitting with all of this, I realized that opinions aren’t so bad after all. They just show that people are humans with different interests, and at some point in life I have to look at life openly, even when we disagree. There are still a lot of things that don’t need to be understood. We don’t need to force it. We just need to keep walking, and notice not just the surface but also what’s lying beneath all the reactions.

The mist was always going to be there. It’s our job to either just hold our lamp, or make it burn brighter and put it in front of us. Then no mist can stop us from seeing the path to our goal.

.aletheia