In My Opinon

That NOISE !!!....relentless... penetrating...nauseating....Do you ever feel like turning “IT” off, shutting it out..telling it to f#%@ off? It enters mostly through the ears, crawls inside your head and nests among the grey matter. If allowed to stay long enough it becomes like an annoying static, lodged in those deep places, as irritating as an unreachable itch. I am speaking of opinions, of course. The “unbiased” TV journalist, the weak kneed politician, the insecure religious mouth, the fame seeking newspaper columnist, the searching blogger, my own thoughts... I know everybody has opinions, and they’re entitled to share them. I’m all for expression and dialogue and the learning that can come out of the communicating of them. It’s healthy to express oneself. It’s important for the progression of society, I truly believe that. I just get tired of them, that’s all. When the sheer number and tone of them echo off the insides of my cranium and begin to sound like the honking of a low flying flock of Canada geese, I get irritable. But I must ask myself, if they irritate me so, why do I hunger for them ??? Hummm...
When I really think about it, it is not so much the opinions themselves that bother me so much...it’s the punctuation. Huh? You see, these days we are bombarded with opinions from every angle through every medium imaginable. Why is it that they are most always followed by periods and exclamation symbols, but rarely with question marks? Are we that insecure in our opinions that we are unwilling to risk changing them by changing the punctuation to curved lines instead of straight ones?

My problem is that I listen to and consider them all. I have discovered that Truth can be found in the oddest of places so I figure all opinions must be considered. Unfortunately, a lot of them make sense to me, even when coming from opposite ends of the spectrum...How does one choose a direction to follow when there appears to be more than one reasonable path to take? How does one choose when they sometimes lead in opposite directions?

C.K. Chesterton said, “It is the mathematician, not the poet who goes mad. While the mathematician tries to build a bridge across the infinite, the poet swims in the sea.”
I, like most people, am part mathematician, and part poet (with perhaps a little bit of couch potato thrown in) Like a mathematician, I am constantly trying to fit all the sensible opinions together into a harmonious matrix. Unfortunately, my Grande Harmonious Theory of Coexistence has not been quite worked out yet. Most attempts to solve it result in a white-noise of short circuitry between the ears and a feeling of complete madness creeping in. I am then reminded of Chesterton’s quote. It is only then, after a bit of mathematical gymnastics that the poet in me accepts that life is infinitely complex, our diversity is endless, and it is all one big mystery. The problem is that swimming in the sea does not come easy to some of us. I need land to orient myself or all I see is waves and feel the undertow.

And so, this week I have chosen to exercise the couch potato in me. I am going to pull the rip cord, inflate my water wings, feel the coolness of the sea on my skin, rest my limbs, put my head back and simply float.....
Yesterday I took my new guitar out of its case, placed my nose into the sound hole, closed my eyes and slowly breathed in...I let the smell of handcrafted wood diffuse into the deepest crevasses of my brain. Sweet, earthy, pure, calming. With my eyes still closed I pulled the pick across a G-chord. The vibrations swept into my ears and replaced the static in my head. Cleansing, purifying, harmonious, mysterious...
In those brief moments I was closer to Truth and in tune with the rhythm, fragrance, and mystery of life than a lifetime of scholarly opinion could ever offer.

But, that’s just MY opinion....