It’s okay to not have an opinion
It was around 2008 when the financial market was plummeting faster than my grades in chemistry. I remembered one of my family members talking about how she was right in her stance of not investing because you could lose all that money. Since our family didn’t know anything about investing, we assume she was right and followed suit. What a terrible idea that was. In hindsight, it probably wasn’t a good idea to listen to someone who didn’t have any skin in the game. Whenever something happens, everyone will have an opinion, and I’d like to argue for the opposite — doing nothing and waiting for more information.
Think of every single world event (domestic and international), one of our immediate urges is to voice an opinion of which we know very little. Then we allow ourselves to get wrapped up emotionally and it all trickles down to our everyday life. Remember the family member that was preaching the anti-investing gospel? Well, she double down on her stance and positioned herself as the “expert” of the family, and tried to convince everyone to not invest. When asked what her so sure, she pointed to the current numbers and coverage. If you’re still with me and reading this, I hope you’re just as baffled and amazed by the tomfoolery that went on. This lady caused the family to lose out on a lot of money. What’s worse is when the market began to recover and started to hit new highs, she was adamant that this will happen again and we would lose our money.
My argument for avoiding having an opinion whenever something is new stems from our human nature of overreacting and justifying whatever action we took from that overreaction1. I believe once you established an opinion, you’ll do whatever it takes to not look foolish in front of peers, then the actions and behaviors will eventually follow your current belief. Even when information comes out that debunks or changes the story, we will do our best to “steel-man” our original position.
For many years, the view of icing an injured part of your body was considered my standard on the way back to recovery. I’ve given that advice to many people and fought that position with all my heart, even though I’ve never done the research on if it was truly beneficial. I was now on team heat and motion — in which there was no icing, just trying to use heat and moving the injured body part to increase blood flow and recovery. Now, I was anti-ice and told everyone to avoid ice. This sounds familiar, right? I switched stance due to something I’ve read and now defended it with admirable effort. Turns out, every injury requires a little bit of heat and ice. Plus it’s a smart idea to go to a professional to fully treat it. Perhaps do experiments to see what works best for you. Either way, I’m a big believer in trying to keep an open mind to see what works and what doesn’t.
To keep an open mind is easy in theory but extremely difficult to do. It’s hard enough to filter out what’s wrong and right when it comes to information, but when people closest to you are telling you how to think, it’s definitely an uphill battle. It will definitely be a balancing act of not being influenced by peers but also being considerate of their stance. If they force you to take a stance you’re not comfortable with, I hope your relationships are fine with disagreements, If not, I recommend not playing their game. Thinking for myself is a skill I’m still trying to acquire and if my peers can’t understand that I can’t and won’t take sides on certain topics, then it’s not a circle worth being around.
The next time anything happens, fight the urge to react. Words will become ideals, and ideals will become behavior. Once we are stuck in that loophole, getting out is difficult. Here’s one of my favorite quotes on not having an opinion:
You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can’t control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Until next week,
Scott
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