There is no need to seek the truth –
Just put a stop to your opinions!
Seng-Ts’an
Our interactions with our loved ones flow from close interactions to distant interactions. Skype makes it easier to stay in touch with our loved ones, along with email and social networking sites. However, distant interactions can be very challenging, as you cannot quite pick up on the nuances of a person’s body language, and in written text, their tone, as they share information with us.
And so we fill in the blanks regarding what we THINK they meant or implied. We start making assumptions based on how we think they will react to an event or issue.
I am guilty of this. I get a thought in my head for what I interpret a person to mean, and then I build a whole scenerio around it. Sometimes, I am dead on, but many times I am so far from the truth. And that is the problem: I get away from the truth by forming my own opinion.
I think parents are especially guilty of forming opinions of their kids. We expect them to react in such a way. After all, we raised them. Isn’t this a typical reaction that we have seen from them before? But of course, they have learned and grown in the same period of time, and they have outside influences other than us, especially as they mature into adults. And so our opinions may be far from the truth.
I have found it easier to get to the truth just by asking my loved ones to explain what they meant, why they did such and such a thing, where they are coming from, etc… The amount of time I spend in my opinion takes up so much energy, often negative, that it just isn’t worth it.
Our challenge is to stop thinking our opinon and start listening for the truth.