For so many of us traveling through life, the meaning of individual life gets blurred with the purpose. Getting caught up in the usual struggles associated with survival can blind us to our goals. Losing sight of the basic principles of existence is like entering a room and forgetting why you went in there. Stare at the walls of the room all you want, they don’t offer any answers. Or do they?
We all do a lot of convincing. Sometimes we convince others, but mostly we convince ourselves. How many, on this journey through life, spend a lot of energy convincing a brain of its own correctness? We have an inner desire to be right. We all seem to have a drive to get on the right side of any issue. We want to get there quickly and stay there. We feel like there’s safety in the formed opinion. The longer you’re on the wrong side of the road, the more likely you are to get wrecked. Right?
Or maybe we only think it’s like that.
I wonder what would happen if, instead of arriving early and setting up residence, we decided to be undecided. What if we didn’t try to convince ourselves we are right about everything and instead decided to discover? What if, instead of forming an opinion and standing firmly on that opinion, we created a fluid sense of our opinions? How would life change if our need to form bias was controlled by our will rather than by whoever shouts the same bias loudest or with the most flowery language? Would we learn more? Would we learn less? Is it possible to loosen a set of opinions gathered over a lifetime? Is it possible we’re limiting ourselves with our set way of thinking?
What’s amazing is we do it every moment of every day. At this moment, any one of us is adding bricks to a wall of opinions. It’s a metaphorical wall inside our minds. We all have one. The question here is: What kind of wall are you building? You need to know if your wall is defense against the outside world or self-made prison. Is it keeping you from getting hurt? Is it keeping you from getting out? Is it a wall of mossy green? A wall of flame? A wall of bones? Or is it a short wall so you can still manage to have conversations with the neighbors?
However we decide to do life, we must survive. If changing your opinion puts you in danger, then don’t listen to me. Keep doing what you’re doing to survive.
Metaphorical walls can have metaphorical gates, windows, and even fluid sections, bricks made of smoke, bricks made of glass, bricks made of magma. We each do what is important for our individual life. We get to decide if our walls are formed from a solid-bedrock-convincing or from a wet-sand-convincing like a sand castle we get to form again and again in ever-changing styles, a never-ending masterpiece of discovery.
