Everything Is Opinion

René Chunilall
Nov 5 · 7 min read

Marcus Aurelius said it best, right? I’m not entirely sure how you feel, but after reading that quote for the first time something clicked in me. It’s like a weird validation kind of feeling where you know something to be true but when you hear someone else say it(especially Marcus Aurelius), it makes you feel a little lighter, a little better and much more confident. Almost like you feel a little less alone in your head. Growing up, I used to find it very odd when I would hear people speak about anything and be so confident with what they would say. Almost as if they knew it to be an absolute truth. I mean, I was convinced because I found this to be so believable. Sometimes it would make me doubt what I thought I knew. I would wonder if I would ever come to a point where I could be so confident about anything. Isn’t this how most of our lives are shaped?

Well, initially I didn’t think much of it. I would easily accept things to be a specific way and went on with my days. This was back when I thought that there was only one right solution to a problem. But after some time I noticed that I was being convinced by people who may have not had the best intentions for me or for themselves. I doubted what I believed to be righteous and started to follow through with immoral acts. After spending a lot of time with low self-esteem and hunting with sheep, I was travelling further and further away from myself. I didn’t know and I didn’t like who I was becoming. I mean, the mirror didn’t look the same anymore. I was leaving myself unsupervised to comments and opinions. I was becoming accustomed to thinking that this was what my life was going to be. I did have this subtle feeling that sometimes people didn’t really know what they were talking about, but I didn’t have the confidence to act on this belief so I would find myself succumbing to these opinions. It was not a pretty time for me because I was finding comfort in the discomfort of not being true to myself.

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.” — Marcus Aurelius

That quote though is beautifully quaint. To me, it meant that I wasn’t alone in this. Back when Marcus Aurelius was alive, he wrote this in his personal writings, which meant that he was facing this subtle injustice as well, and as an emperor and a human being, he had to deal with this. This also made me see that no one’s spared from this. You just have to learn to work with it. I found a weird sense of strength in this. I realized that I was not being true to who I was because I was giving in to who other people were. I was not doing justice to myself. After this, I decided to regain some of my power and focus much more on developing myself and the qualities I needed to help me stay true to who I am and what I believe in. Dealing with opinions may be something that I face for the rest of my life, but it is something that must be accepted as normality, like the breathing of air or satisfying of one’s hunger. You must remember as well that even this, in itself, is an opinion. I am not free from it just because I realize it. No one is. Like everyone else, I see my life based on my experiences and come to my conclusions because of the way my mind works. If you do not find comfort with your thinking process, look deeper and train your mind to think in a way that makes you feel less regretful. Every thing that you interact with in your external environment is not meant to do anything else other than provide nourishment for your internal environment. You just have to be brave enough to endure your feelings. If you do pursue this journey, you need to:

Be Aware Of Prejudices

Each person experiences situations in a specific way. Two people could see the same situation in completely different ways. As unique individuals, we have a way of thinking, of conceptualizing the life that we live. So a person may not always be comprehensive about something. They may not notice something and choose to act on this somewhat vague understanding or prejudice. Now that we have many ways in which people can express themselves — writing, speaking, acting, etc. — there is much more content being created. The people creating content may do their best to be as holistic as possible, but to some degree, there will be a gap, something missing. Do your best to remind yourself to accept everything with some doubt, so that you question it and make a little more sense of it. If it does make sense and it is righteous, then you take that and fill in those gaps. After all, this is what you were meant to do, until someone else comes along and fills in the gaps. Don’t live your entire life checking the integrity of the bricks laid by another. There were bricks that you were meant to lay, be sure to do so and when you are done, someone will continue where you left off. Soon this structure may be a home providing comfort to many, but you have to lay your bricks.

The greatest deception which men incur proceeds from their opinions.” — Leonardo da Vinci

And remember that:

You Don’t Know Any Life Other Than Your Own

Seems, like a curse to a thinking mind, right? Or is it a blessing to never be blessed with this capability? I feel if we actually knew what we were never destined to know, we would have less control over ourselves than we currently do and become the chaos that exists in our external environment. It must be somewhat comforting to know that the only person experiencing every moment of your life is you. It is just you that knows your own thoughts and your own life. You are your own cognitive being conceptualizing your life and the same with others. You have to respect and accept these boundaries that we have between one another. In the end, we were only meant to know our own life, whilst being inspired by the lives of others. You may not know enough about another’s life to understand their thinking process, but you do know enough about yours to come to conclusions that you believe is righteous. Remember, you have less control over being exposed to a bunch of things, but you do have control over yourself. You were given a life to live, be sure that you do as you were meant to do. Do yourself a favor and sleep without a guilty conscience. Understand that others are trying to do the same. When you regain this power, you could inspire others to do the same. You just have to be the beacon of hope.

He who has no opinion of his own, but depends upon the opinion and taste of others, is a slave.” — Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock

Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash

We are all perspectives of reality existing with the sole purpose of following these perspectives of reality. Some of these perspectives may be passed onto us to further these perspectives along the righteous path. It is quite easy to become consumed by limits dictated by other’s perspectives and remove all doubts that we may have about it. To not doubt something is to believe it entirely as an absolute truth. To live in a world creating certainty where uncertainty is rife is like dwelling in memories instead of creating them. In the moment it seems good, but after some time it becomes foolish — like an apple tree refusing to bear any fruit other than pears. You just have to ask yourself, how sure are you of your opinions?

Invest In Your Existence, Kind Reader…

René Chunilall

Written by

A Human Being So | Check out my podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1qw6rdLqEy1ibx5CP1uiw6

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