Transcript

Always Opinions · Wanzology

Always Opinions Doo-ba doo-ba doo, doo-ba doo-ba doo, doo-ba doo-ba doo, doo doo!! Hey, what's happening with you? Welcome to another episode of WANZOLOGY!! I am your host, The Wanz, checking in with you, and we've made it to what we call here Bastille Day!! Now, if you're not French, that's okay, we'll forgive you. How you doing? You good? Is everybody around you good? Excellent. I hope so. It's gotten to be that part of the summer where we go into what are called the dog days of summer. Dog days of summer meaning it's getting pretty lazy. The days are starting to get a little shorter every day, and we're heading towards the ‘dark times’ again. And if you're in the Pacific Northwest, that means it's gonna rain, and it's gonna rain, it's gonna be gray, and it's gonna rain. Okay? Okay? It's gonna rain, it's gonna be gray, and don't you get all down about it. We'll get through it, you'll see. But in the meantime, which is now, I wanted to talk about something that all of us human beings are susceptible to but don't really notice until after they've done their damage, and that is opinions. Always opinions turning you 'round. Always opinions bringing you down. There's an old, uh, Fixx song off the Reach the Beach album called "Opinions" that I was listening to a lot yesterday as I was watching the sun go down, and I started thinking about those people who really, really, really get all twisted around the axles because of opinions. The opinions of others, the opinions of people they ‘think’ are paying attention to them with no proof, with no evidence. It's just a story made up in the middle of the mind between the ears, that slippery place in between y'all's ears! It has been said that opinions are like axxholes. Everybody's got one. It has also been said that opinions don't matter if they come to you from the outside. It's when they come to you from the inside that you should be concerned. I will agree with that part of the hypothesis. Opinions about oneself can be some of the most powerful, destructive, unmotivating things ever. Sometimes we actually admit that we believe what we tell ourselves, even though we know we shouldn't. Don't think so? Women have, for decades, always had that question, "Do these jeans make my butt look big?" And guys are always caught in that catch-22 answer, 'cause if they say “yes”, they're in trouble. If they say “no”, she'll say, "You're lying." You can't win. Well, yes, you can. Honesty is always the best policy. The question, "Do these jeans make my butt look big?", “Well, they kinda do, but then again, that's a good thing 'cause I like big butts, and I cannot lie!”, truth will always set you free. Of course, you may get free with a black eye. You may get free with all your stuff thrown out the window onto the sidewalk, but you will be free. “Always opinions turning you 'round, always opinions turning you down. Never decisions, uh, uh, uh, oh, letting me down, always conditions turning you 'round”, is how the song goes. “Always opinions turning you 'round”, I love that song. Look it up on your Google machine, Opinions by The Fixx, with two Xs, and listen to it. I have to be candid and tell you that the song basically is about politics, but it applies to humans. How many times have you gone someplace you've never been before, and you could swear that somebody was looking at you sideways? You just knew they had some kind of opinion about you being you in their vicinity. How dare you show up where they already are being, well, you. Has that ever happened? Or did you just feel like everybody was watching you? Say you go into a bar or saloon or a bar and grill that you've never been in before, doesn't it feel like everyone in there is looking at you as you look around because you aren't familiar with the territory? You don't know where you wanna sit, if you're meeting someone, you can't see exactly where they are, but you can see all those other eyeballs looking at you, can't you? Can't you? I have experiences like that all the time 'cause people don't know who I am. More importantly, they don't know what I am, and I like it that way. I like it that way because I get to determine the answer to both of those suppositions. I get to determine who I am and what I am. Remember, you have the power and the privilege to control everything that happens on the inside of your skin, actually, what you think of everything on the inside of your skin. Everything on the outside of your skin, you got no control over at all, you're going to be reacting to whatever's out there, and that's fine. I mean, Lord knows the inside of a brain is a hard place to navigate regardless of who or where you are. But what happens when you intercept or are blocked by the opinion of someone else? Maybe you can't parallel park. Maybe you don't look good in a yellow shirt. Maybe you like Brussels sprouts, what the heck is wrong with you? Could be anything. So what does it matter? Someone has an opinion of you. What does it matter, hmm? In your brain, you of course are mulling things around trying to understand why somebody would have an opinion towards you, or you're freaked out because somebody would have an opinion of you, or you're totally ticked off that someone would have an opinion of you. What did I say earlier? Opinions are like axxholes, they all stink. I don't care how clean you wash your booty, your booty still stank, that's just the way it is. When I was a kid, I really, really had a problem controlling my temper. It was pretty easy for someone to express their opinion of how to say my last name or how small I was or any number of things, and I would get ticked off in an instant. Being that I was small and scrawny, that never worked out well for me. I always... I got in fights, and I got my ass kicked. But as I got older, I didn't want that to happen anymore, and the digs and the cuts would evolve, and I started learning, I didn't start to, I had to learn how to verbally defend myself since no one was really gonna teach me how to physically defend myself. To this day, there are certain things that trigger me. Hell, there are things that trigger you too, and you know what they are. For me, it's being interrupted while I talk. If I'm trying to explain something to someone and they start interrupting me, talking about their experience with what I'm trying to explain, it can happen once, maybe twice, maybe even three or four times, but sooner or later, I'm gonna start getting a little sideways because I'm ‘feeling’ like what I have to say is not important to you. That's the way it was when I was a kid. I was raised by parents who did not need to hear ‘back talk’ from a child, even if it was their own. They knew better than I did. Now, I disagreed with that supposition simply because, you know, I was the one going to third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade with all those other small people, and my parents weren't. But when I would describe what I was going through, they minimized and placated me and told me just to get over it, ‘sticks and stones’ and all that other stuff. Sticks and stones aren't gonna find me a way to get home that's not gonna let me run into two people who wanna pound me into the ground, and they didn't understand that. For me emotionally, they abandoned me. It's not their fault. They didn't have the environment that I did, and I didn't have the environment that they did growing up. It took decades for me to understand this, and even now, as a past middle-aged Black man, I still have buttons that get pushed. Sometimes I don't know how to react to them. I have my defenses, namely a quick wit, an observant state of mind. I have the ability to have somebody look at themselves because they're looking at me, meaning I turn things around on other people. If they say, "Oh, wow, that's an, that's an interesting coat you wear.", "Yeah, very interesting. More interesting and intelligent than a coat you would ever choose." And that's fine. "Wow, that's a nasty color. Where did you get that?", "Oh, I got this nasty color out of your closet." Everybody has an opinion. Why is it that us human beings never, ever learn early how to handle opinions? Some do. I don't think that my circumstances back then were extremely different from some others, but they were different enough that I felt some sort of way about it for decades, had to do a lotta years of counseling to get through it and am still working on it. But what is an opinion? It is somebody else's perception. Now, I say somebody else's, but let's break that down just one time. Like I said earlier, if it's coming from outside of your body, you don't have any control over it, remember? So if someone is giving you an opinion of their own, what's it based on? You could ask, "What is that opinion based on?" You could reply with a retort claiming that they're mistaken, they don't really understand why they're saying what they're saying. You could be defensive in a manner that gives them back exactly what they gave you, or you could even ignore them. It's up to you. You get to choose. You always get to choose. How are you going to react to somebody else, somebody else's opinion, even if it's correct? "Boy, you've got those, you've got those brown eyes.", "I know I got brown eyes. What of it?" "Don't get defensive now. I'm just saying you got brown eyes.", "Yeah, but why would you say that?" "Well, um, because I, I have hazel eyes and mine look different.", “So? What's the big deal?”, What's the big deal? “Your grandmama got little hairs growing out of her chin, what's the big deal? Your mom still calls you by your government name.” In fact, she calls you all three names because she loves you that much. But when you're around your crew and you hear all three of those names, you, you think you're in trouble, and your crew thinks that you're a baby. Well, that's their opinion. They're not related. They don't understand. And more times than not, that is what we forget. Human beings forget that someone looking at us and expressing an opinion for some reason almost always is based on them not understanding what they see, what they hear about you. What they see about you, what they hear about you, they really don't know. Misperception is the enemy They told me in anger management a million years ago, "Do you really know what's going on or do you just think you know what's going on?" Let's flip that script a little bit. Do you understand what somebody is saying to you or do you ‘think’ you understand what somebody is saying to you? Maybe you need more clarification. Maybe you need more definition. Maybe you're the one misperceiving, not them. Communication is hard. We know this. Hell, everybody knows this! I don't want pickles on my hamburger. I don't like my bun toasted. I don't like meat. Yeah, more power to you. I have opinions about those that I won't express right now, all three of them. You get the idea. If it's coming from the outside, it is usually coming from a place that doesn't have the same knowledge that you have on the inside. So stay inside. Stay inside and repeat whatever opinion comes at you. Maybe ask why someone would have that opinion. You never know, they might not know how to tell you they admire that certain thing about you. Maybe they would be embarrassed if they admitted they were jealous that you looked a certain way and they didn't. Maybe you have something they've always dreamed of and you don't notice that they're a little sore that they can't obtain the same thing. There's lots going on, not only in your brain, but in somebody else's. My suggestion, don't react with defense, react with curiosity. Be curious. Why would somebody say something like that to you right then and there? Why? The answer may not be what you expect. And this is really hard, you have to practice. You really have to practice mentally someone asking you or someone giving their opinion about you or some facet of your person, or someone you're connected to, or some thing that's connected to you. Everybody has them. If you're not good at understanding why, well, here's your opportunity to learn. Ask questions. Question never killed anybody, that's what I figured out. So go forth and learn what the heck people's opinion about you or someone or something that you love is all about. Ask questions first. First, not later, after the cops have shown up and they're putting the bracelets on you, ask the questions first. That way, you get a chance to make an informed decision. And boy, we so need more of those, you and me. Thanks a lot, man, woman, whatever you be. Thank you very much for spending some time with me. Go forth and learn about other people's opinions. Who knows, you might learn something about yourself that you didn't see before. May the power of discovery be with you. I will see you later, bu-bye!!!!