Eat it Up and Spit it Out

OPINIONS. We couldn't avoid them, could we?

Every time I open a newspaper or a magazine, I couldn't deny myself from opening the opinion page. Away from those factual articles which, oftentimes, give me up-to-the-minute information, opinion-containing essays give me insights on how people perceive certain issues that confound life. Sometimes, the writers' opinions also invoke me to give out my own point of view of the issue and compare it from theirs. They often leave deliberations in my psyche which encourage me to rummage around for facts.

Lately, I have discerned that, indeed, life could never be separated from opinions just like a newspaper without editorial is not newspaper at all. As long as we do not isolate ourselves from others, we could never take fudge from those opinions which would either construct or destruct our characters.

Being an educator at a very young age, I often receive both positive and negative opinions from other people – my friends, colleagues, family, and superiors (as they call it). Naturally, I feel conceited when I hear positive opinions and inhibited when I hear negative ones. However, I always try to patch things up by not focusing on those things for I don’t believe the necessity of living an opinion-driven life. My initial reactions are just part of the so called sudden and instinctive human response.

However, people’s judgment biologically keeps on bombarding us as we live life from day to day. Seclusion could be a very good deterrence to those sharp gazes but we could not desert the reality that we are irrefutably created for one another – we live not for our own selves. The world is systematically functioning in which each one is conscientious for a particular mission.

Other people’s opinion would never stop bearing us down unless we look at it in a positive way. Opinions are away from our sway and we could never say that they’re right unless supported by facts or wrong just because they don’t coincide with ours. What the world needs is respect – an unfailing deference that would not necessarily buy other’s opinion but rather the one that could listen to others and understand how such things happen. We are uniquely created and so what works for me would not necessarily work for others.

As Stephen Covey suggested in his book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” the first habit that we have to develop to become personally effective is the habit of becoming PROACTIVE. According to him, proactive people are driven by values that are independent of the weather or how people treat them.

Certainly, we have direct control over problems caused by our own behavior. We could solve it by changing our habit. However, we have indirect control over problems caused by other people’s behavior. We could not dictate them what to do and how to do. The best way in dealing all those perplexities in life is to set ourselves as examples – a model worthy of emulation. As an old adage says, “Win your enemies by making them your friends.”