Opinions

We live in a day when people are airing their opinions at an alarming rate. I'm sure people have done it for millennia – on cave walls, around the city gates, at church, and in newspapers.

I think the real opinion stampede started with Phil Donahue. What do you think about “X”? – then talk about it for an hour. Back then, only five people in the audience got to say their peace and the rest of the country was left to talk to the TV set. Then came Oprah. Then came talk radio and if you got through the phone lines and the host let you talk, boy, you’d really had some exposure!

Opinions found their way to the internet; I suppose e-mail was the first sneeze of the opinion virus.

Now of course, we have My Space, Facebook, Twitter and Blogs. Opinions have been exposed to these radioactive devices and the Opinion Monster is now eating whole cities and countries.

It won’t surprise you to learn I have a theory on opinions.

I don’t think people should fight over opinions. Opinions are not facts. Opinions are not valuable.

Opinions are worth exactly what you pay for them.

Opinions have no physical substance and therefore cannot run you over like a car. They are air, but they have no power to even turn a pinwheel, let alone a windmill.

Let people have their opinions unmolested by your own.

I like to listen to other people’s opinions, especially if they differ from my own. Sometimes just letting people speak their opinion allows them to hear themselves and test the veracity of it. You don’t even have to point out that they may be wrong, they can hear it themselves.

Listening to people who share my own opinions seems repetitive. (Although sometimes it is comforting.)

Getting combative over other’s opinions is a colossal waste of time and usually means you have other issues beside a differing opinion.

If one person gives an opinion and invites you to give yours, an exchange is not the same as a battle. There’s no reason to pierce the other person’s opinion or to hit them on a personal level as a response. Put your opinion next to theirs and see which one stands. No other work involved.

The only caveat to my “Don’t fight over opinions” Theory is that actions arising from opinions are quite another matter.

I have to go now because my little boy wants to me stare at a Golden Grahams box to see if I can see the hidden image and in my opinion, that’s valuable.