For a long time, I didn’t hold opinions in very high esteem. Given how abundant they are I figured they were easy to come up with. You just point at something and say, “this is good” or “this is bad”. I felt that chronic opinion having was a way of thinking that discouraged careful attention, as opinion havers seem to have already made their minds up about something before really looking at it. I tried to cultivate in myself and my writing an approach to the world based less on opinion and more on observation and description. The question was not, is this thing good or bad, but what am I really seeing when I look at this? To describe the world as I see it, I felt, would give me access to things as they are, instead of beginning with an idea of how things should be and then getting angry when they don’t meet that expectation, or feeling vindicated when they do.
On having opinions
On having opinions
For a long time, I didn’t hold opinions in very high esteem. Given how abundant they are I figured they were easy to come up with. You just point at something and say, “this is good” or “this is bad”. I felt that chronic opinion having was a way of thinking that discouraged careful attention, as opinion havers seem to have already made their minds up about something before really looking at it. I tried to cultivate in myself and my writing an approach to the world based less on opinion and more on observation and description. The question was not, is this thing good or bad, but what am I really seeing when I look at this? To describe the world as I see it, I felt, would give me access to things as they are, instead of beginning with an idea of how things should be and then getting angry when they don’t meet that expectation, or feeling vindicated when they do.