“One Strong Belief” #Trust30
Here’s today’s prompt (and my response) from the #Trust30 30-day writing challenge. You can learn more and join in on the challenge here.
“It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
The world is powered by passionate people, powerful ideas, and fearless action. What’s one strong belief you possess that isn’t shared by your closest friends or family? What inspires this belief, and what have you done to actively live it?
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I believe that everyone has something to offer if only they are given the opportunity to have a voice. I think that many people want to believe this, but few actually live as if this were true. It’s way too easy to surround ourselves with people who are nothing but mirrors of ourselves in all the significant ways that we think, act, and assume. When assumptions are questioned, then everything that we feel and believe is threatened. But the sneaky part about assumptions is that they are often merely assumed—there is no strong reason or warrant to believe them. But, despite how tenuous they are, they are so foundational to the way that we view the world and filter our ideas. That’s why “giving a voice” is crucial to believing that everyone has something to offer. A voice, no matter how rich its content, amounts to nothing if it is not given an ear.
I know this all too well because of what I have lived through. For 18 years or so I limited my personal assessment of who had a voice to an extremely select few. Anyone who did not share 95% or so of my religious or political convictions were immediately suspect. And by suspect, I mean completely wrong and devoid of any constructive contribution to me. Now, after realizing the insane arrogance of this kind of epistemic posture, I find myself the target of the same scrutiny.
While being given a strong ‘dose of my own medicine’ has helped me see how foolish and arrogant I once was, it also helps to hone and expose how limited I continue to be. So, my goal now is to always give an ear to a voice no matter how different it is than mine. My goal is to listen, really listen, to both new voices that I am unfamiliar with as well as old voices that might have a fresh work of critique against where I am now. My goal is to live a life of cognitive humility. As arrogant as I find myself, I’m not worried about the charges of being “too openminded,” or being told that I change my beliefs too often. I’d rather be a listener and a learner and be wrong, than I would to dig my cognitive heels into the ground and assume a posture that I have “already arrived.”
