One day, I was going for a walk, and I was thinking about some good friends who had recently separated.

They had been married for 10 years, had two kids, and had once had been madly in love. I was tossing around in my head what I thought about their breakup.

As I was struggling with what to make of these unfortunate events, I had the most amazing realization: I didn’t have to think anything, because it was none of my f*ckin’ business.

This momentary epiphany was liberation. My mind was free of having to know or think anything about other people’s lives, and I could just be.

For most of us, this shift away from being opinionated takes a little bit of effort, because our minds are desperate for some sort of sense of security. Our minds search constantly for definite answers of “right” or “wrong” that will make this human experience easier, more certain, and secure.

This is impossible, though.

All we have to do is look to the reality of our lives, and we will see that this plight of the mind to keep us safe through some type of opinionated knowing will never be a success.

Have your thoughts ever kept you from getting sick or prevented someone you love from dying? They haven’t, and they never will.

Confusion can be our best friend—if we let it.

In order to let confusion be our friend, we need to be willing to become opinion-less. We need to stop believing that having a thought (that will likely turn out to be inaccurate) makes us a bad, stupid loser of a person.

What if it was impossible to be a loser? What if we can’t lose at life? If this was true, then we’d no longer need to have an opinion.

Because there is something much more beautiful than an opinion about the traumatic events of the world—and that is an open, loving heart.

Right now with the #metoo movement and the racist governing of the American government, there is a lot of hurt we are exposed to through our daily perusing of social media.

I challenge you to watch how needing to have an opinion about who is right and who is wrong prevents you from feeling into the pain on all sides.

When you feel the pain—and you really see how feeling the discomfort, versus trying to think through an answer, cracks you open just a little deeper—you might come to join me in the conclusion that sometimes we just need to “f*ck having an opinion” and open ourselves to having compassion toward all of humanity, no matter if we mentally agree or not.

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Relephant:

28 Ways to be Kinder, Gentler & More Compassionate.

More than Compassion: The Gift of Empathy.

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Author: Ruth Lera
Image: Pixabay
Editor: Yoli Ramazzina
Copy Editor: Travis May