A Reminder: The Weight of Opinion
It’s a rainy day as I write this, and I can’t help but feel that it’s here for a reason; to drive me into a level of reflection that I haven’t ventured into and written about much on here before. While I want to keep this website as a source of actionable ideas and behaviours to improve some aspect of your life, what we’ll talk about today will be a little different. Although certainly not off theme, it will be more reflective than the usual “tips and tricks” or summaries of psychological or neuroscientific concepts.
The divisiveness of the world has been hitting me differently as of late. I usually have a relatively easy time in keeping separate or at least being aware, of how the state of the world is affecting me psychologically. By that I mean with the amount of time I regularly invest into self-care/anti-stress practices, I am able to stay somewhat ahead of the all-too-familiar psychological turmoil I strive to prevent. Recently, however, I assume as a result of personal stressors (and allowing myself to mindlessly doom scroll Instagram) in my life, I’ve begun to notice a shift. I can see how these personal stressors sneak in and paint a lot of my psychological landscape, deeply affecting my perception of the world and the people, my place in it, and how useful my efforts are, both here and out in the world.
Amidst the moments where I’ve caught myself with a clenched jaw, or shallow, tense breathing, I’ve also noticed how my mind has started breeding a type of anger and hostility that I don’t wish to bring into the world. Sometimes that comes out looking like unnecessary anger at someone while driving, or misunderstanding a comment my partner said, and having an abnormally large reaction. It’s always after a few moments of calming myself down when I notice just how badly I have blown something out of proportion. Above all this, however, sits the most disturbing aspect; that I have begun to confuse people’s opinions and messages with who they are. My mind struggles to separate the two; the idea, or opinion, and the person who holds it. Like a sort of tension induced tunnel vision, where my typically understanding brain malfunctions and completely misinterprets someone’s behaviour or opinion as an inherent flaw in who they are as a person. Now of course I have plenty of disagreements with all sorts of opinions and perspectives, but what is relatively shocking for me though is my new tendency to allow a single opinion or behaviour to taint my opinion of that person.
Granted, I hadn’t always been like that. I attributed my ability to “see the person behind the opinion” to my experiences with meditation, psychedelics, and regular spiritual practice. I worked hard at maintaining a level of love, or at least appreciation, for each person and their perspectives. After all, how could I decide if someone’s opinion is more or less valid than my own when we both wound up with our opinions in the same way; from our experiences.
Albeit difficult to witness, I see this recent tendency as a new opportunity. It’s a chance to meet a part of myself that I may have been trying to keep quiet. The part of myself that does have strong preferences and who only wants to celebrate the people whose thinking aligns with mine. Perhaps before I was getting by just being young and hung up on being a “spiritual person”, such that my neurology just prevented these newfound “struggles”. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter why this issue is just arising now. I view it as only another step to take on my path; on all of our path’s.
So the reasonable place to reflect on first is to ask why it’s showing up. Why now, am I failing to separate the individual, who is inherently valuable and deserving of love, from their opinions and perspective despite my best efforts?
Tension comes to mind; physiological arousal. Perhaps the anxiety, paranoia, and intolerance to the unpredictable nature of our situation have chipped away at me. Neurologically, this might look like an upregulation in activity in the right side of my brain, especially in the deeper, subcortical (beneath the neocortex) areas called the limbic system. I suspect the right side because research has found (The Master and His Emissary by Iain Mcgilchrist is a fantastic book that dives deeply into this topic) that the right hemisphere of the brain is primarily concerned with prey like behaviours; like hyper-vigilance, imagination (especially when it comes to imagining threats), and other safety-related behaviours. I imagine that the increased amounts of stress and anxiety I’ve been feeling has donated, or is caused by, this shift in metabolism to the right, deep parts of my brain. This change in activity seems to have altered my safety based psychology, altering the way I imagine and handle threats.
It’s silly to think that someone with a different opinion than you can be thought of, or perceived as a threat; at least when you compare it to threats to your survival, like physical violence or famine. But as silly as it seems, our brains have done an amazing job at taking old ancient fears and responses, and mapping those responses onto seemingly modern fears like social judgement. Social judgement has also been a threat to our survival for a very long time; think how devastating it would’ve been to be alienated from your tribe, to be exiled out into the wild due to something you said, did, or believed (history is littered with thousands of examples of this happening, sometimes reasonable, sometimes not). It almost certainly meant death, or at least that you were about to have a very difficult time. Our brain remembers that.
With this threat-detection system in mind, multiplied by today’s volatile mainstream media and social media interactions, I believe a lot of us are walking around very worried that our opinions might get us into trouble, or at least judged and vulnerable to harsh criticism. I believe this is the essential mechanism behind this recent shift I’ve been experiencing. My brain has reduced its tendency to separate the person from their opinions, and now perceives the entire person, opinion included, as a threat.
Surely I’m not alone here.
If you’ve made it this far, thanks for sticking around. I want to finish this with a few solutions that I’ve been employing, especially when I catch myself cursing someone out.
Solutions to Divisiveness
The first, most simple one, is remembering. I remember that a person is not their opinion, or at least make the effort to remind myself that just like me, each person developed their opinions in the same way I did, through experience. Sure, I’ve spent most of my adult life in search of truth and objectivity in traditional and non-traditional avenues; that is all meaningless if I employ my ability to reason to make someone feel smaller by proving them wrong. This doesn’t mean that my goal is to walk around being stepped on and letting people get away with things, it’s more of a decision to prioritize peace over confrontation. I love to debate, have difficult conversations, and learn new things about myself and others. What I won’t sacrifice in the search for these things, however, is my choice to always treat the other person with as much respect and love as I give myself.
“I will always choose love over being right.”
The second component to my approach is loving-kindness meditation, also called Metta meditation. Admittedly, before a few weeks ago, I hadn’t regularly done Metta Meditation, mostly because my passion and curiosity fell onto Vipassana Meditation or Insight Meditation. Vipassana is a sort of meditation practice where you pay attention to the sensations of the body and mind. It has always been a sort of home base for me; it’s something I could develop at home and use to instantly ground myself when life’s noise got too loud. I’ll always imagine it as a parachute; “there when you need it”. It’s also an excellent concentration training tool that allows me to explore other types of meditation. I have a few articles on this topic you can find on the articles page if you’d like to learn more.
I’ve since shifted my priority and focus to Metta Meditation because of how it makes me feel both during the meditation, and the hum it gives me for the rest of the day. Metta Meditation is a technique used in meditation where you bring a person into your mind, and as deeply and honestly as you can, wish the absolute best for them. Imagine them getting everything they could ever want. You can play around with who your object is. Obviously, it is easier if you bring to mind someone you already have a level of appreciation for, but don’t stop there; after all our goal here is to get to a place where we include anyone and the feeling doesn’t change. Can you imagine what that would be like? Our neurology, by default, is wired in a way to value the people closest to us, but why not experiment with people you’ve never met? If our true goal is to achieve a level of appreciation for everyone we see, why not practice that? At first, it might seem a bit silly, after all, nothing actually happens for that person. Alas, spending time with this practice activates portions of the brain that are associated with gratitude and that person, which will create and reinforce associative networks. This means that after x hours of practice, each time you see that person in real life, your brain says “hey, I know this person, and I’ve wished them well so many times, I must really love this person”. The result is that you actually feel closer and genuinely grateful for them. This process looks almost the exact same when you extend the practice out to strangers. And because we haven’t met strangers, we are actually influencing our relationship with the world. So no matter who you pass on the street, all your brain sees is love and appreciation. Sure, people will still get under your skin, but just like family, you love them no matter what.
“Extending your Metta out to the world turns everyone you walk by into someone you sincerely wish the best for, no matter their opinions or perspectives.”
And last but certainly not least, is to continue working with yourself. Observing your reactions, and your reactions to your reactions…etc. Hone your character, your behaviour, and your world view. You won’t get very far by shaming yourself when you don’t automatically feel love and appreciation for strangers. Like I mentioned above, you just aren’t wired to do that (yet). Shaming yourself into feeling grateful for someone “because I should” just doesn’t work. You have to come at it from another angle. Why are you having a difficult time with this particular person or idea/topic? Why can you talk about certain topics and never become slightly bothered, while hinting at a different topic makes your heart race and fists clench? Sure, you have all your rationale and logical arguments around why you’re right and they’re wrong. But why does this one have you so tightly? Why is your threat-detection system so sensitive when it comes to this particular topic? I assume you have opinions about all sorts of things, yet we tend to be most sensitive around particular ones. By questioning the basis of your opinions, you are able to gain a brand new perspective on yourself, and by principle, other people. The journey of self-exploration offers many things, but perhaps above all, especially in regards to this topic, is your capacity to forgive. And like the Great Ru Paul says, “if you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you going to love someone else?”.
“Self-exploration teaches us how to forgive, and love ourselves”
It’s easy to get lost in the clouds that hang so low in the sky. It might feel like it will never clear up again. But rest assured, there is always a blue sky behind whatever clouds are hanging above you, and although you can’t see them right now, sometimes just the knowledge that the sun shines somewhere is enough to get you through.
Have a great weekend everyone,
Our Blue Sky Minds
