My aunt once told me, “Every mind is its own world.”

That stuck with me mainly because it makes dealing with those whose opinions differ vastly from my own a little bit easier. It’s very easy to hold onto one’s views when they aren’t challenged: I suppose it’s why birds of a feather flock together. Holding similar viewpoints and ideas is what cements friendships, after all.

However, it’s a completely different story when our viewpoints are challenged: it seems like there’s a knee-jerk reaction to just scream “IT’S WRONG BECAUSE I SAY SO!” without any real reflection on why the other person may hold these views which are so alien to one’s own. There’s a reason why they say the personal is political, after all. My aunt’s comment inspired me to make my own, to understand the world I found myself in, “Every mind may be its own world. Treat each soul you find as your own.”

The soul. What a weightless concept, it’s very ethereal quality is what has called man to embrace philosophia since the get-go.

My point is that we pontificate, we proselytize, we pout until we get our point across. We have a viewpoint that cannot be altered. Except that if we chose to accept that our viewpoint could be wrong, we might have a change of mind. Our ideas are so rooted because we’ve lived them, but perhaps, it’d be possible to acknowledge that someone else had a different experience and this is shaping where and why they have the ideas they do.

It seems a bit obtuse to say, but no one’s ever had a “perfect” life.

In abstract, hypothetical terms, a person of one background may have more privilege in life than another, but this is an unrealistic way to assess problems of privilege. It assumes that there is a person who is either getting treated better or worse because of their very manner of existing.

The reality is that we are always engaged in feedback loops with others, and at any given moment we can both be receiving praise and punishment for how we are presenting ourselves to the world. At some point, we should be able to accept that those we are interacting with have chosen to also interact with us. Instead of reacting by outshouting them, the better response is to just listen to them.

There is something wonderful in realizing that granting a person to our perspectives allows us to further figure out their worldview. Their minds do not have to be as sepaeate from our own, except to the extent that we chose to allow.