I like to talk. And when I talk I like to offer my opinions. If you ask people who know me well, most will say I’m “opinionated.” I don’t take this as an insult.
One friend said “you have a monologue about almost everything.” And I didn’t argue with him.
My free moments are often spent grappling with issues I read about. Ideas and arguments rattle around in my head like puzzle pieces waiting to be assembled.
I work hard at completing each puzzle, but most remain a work in progress. Enough pieces have been fitted to reveal – but only partially reveal – something beautiful. Well-reasoned, properly-articulated, eminently-defensible thoughts on complex subjects are beautiful. But they are as rare as fine art.
Too many opinions of the day are more like “content.” Content is not art. Content is produced in high volume at a low cost by “content creators,” not artists.
Sometimes we crank out opinion after opinion with very little serious consideration. We may do this because we (more or less) repeat the views of others with only a few minor, personal modifications.
We can be forgiven for doing so. Editorials abound. Pundits are everywhere. There are plenty of thoughts available to be repeated!
The hard work of discovering facts, testing hypotheses, and analyzing potential conclusions (and ways of expressing them) are outsourced.
I once heard a professor say something like “I don’t quote from a book until I own the ideas of the author for myself.” He didn’t mean just agreement. He meant discovering the truth of a quote by his own observation.
This does not mean (necessarily) arriving at a new conclusion. We may arrive at the same general conclusion, but take our own journey to get there. That is, building the framework to support our position with materials we have collected and connected ourselves.
Opinions like these can be tested. They can be expressed without fear. Questions on why and how we arrived at these conclusions can be answered without a Google search. We are well-acquainted with the facts, because we have wrestled with them extensively ourselves.
Owning our views will be hard work. But people of integrity don’t avoid hard work. People of integrity listen and learn, but we don’t steal. We agree, but we don’t impersonate. We take counsel, but we don’t take it and present it as our own.
When we take ownership of opinions, we are responsible. There is no third party to blame for their flaws or inconsistencies. We did the homework. We confirmed the facts. We tested their logic against the best opposing viewpoints. And we described them in our own words.
If they needed to be said, they were kind, and left open the possibility we could be wrong, they may have been helpful. That will be up to those who hear them.
I hope to continue expressing myself here. My views won’t always be right. If you look closely, you’ll find the holes. Their beauty will be up for debate. But at least they’ll belong to me.