Diverse opinions and social consequences

I've never been miss popularity. In fact through most of my childhood, I was among the least popular, if not clearly the least popular kid in school. As I've grown, and formed, and transformed my life, personality, beliefs and habits, I can pinpoint many reasons for this, and I'm sure there are many others that I may never know. Certainly, as an adult, polite people don't come out and tell you why they don't like you. They typically won't even admit that they don't like you, which by the way, makes perceptive people think they're crazy and crazy people crazier (more on this in a later post).

Recently I offended an acquaintance of mine, someone I greatly respect and admire with a thoughtless and insulting comment on Facebook over politics. It really served to broaden my awareness of a big obstacle that I haven't quite been seeing clearly for a long time. It's something that is probably very taxing to my social life and has doubtless contributed to the strain in my relationship with my only sister.

A couple of things about me; first of all, I am passionately opinionated. I don't believe I'm the sort of person who rushes to instant judgement over every issue that is put on the table, but those things with which I have an invested interest, have spent a lot of time and energy researching and learning about, and which I think are of great consequence, I do express my opinion confidently and readily. Many issues, with which I am ignorant of all the facts or don't have an adequate understanding of, I remain neutral and am usually capable of understanding both sides.

The other thing -(I'm about to point out one of my good qualities here, which always makes me squirm, but part of successful self improvement has to be acknowledging your strengths and celebrating your victories)- is I have a talent for seeing the the best in others and forgiving their faults. The ability to utilize this is sometimes hindered by the state of my spirit, and I'll admit that I have a harder time doing it with my immediate family (where it's most important), because in a way I see them as an extension of myself and I'm a ruthless perfectionist, but I'm working on that too. For the most part, I am slow to anger and quick to forgive others. However, because I am passionately opinionated, I think I appear to be just the opposite to others. I create the impression that I am judgmental, angry and hateful, this really is far from true. I sometimes express my opinion in a forceful or sarcastic (my sense of humor may cause some problems too) way, but in my own mind it is never personal.

It hadn't occurred to me that this was happening, although it should have, because I've often heard others express opinions that were different that mine and thought "oh, they would hate me!" But, it didn't occur to me that people thought that of me, because individual worth is so far separated in my mind from ideology and belief and even lifestyle. I do truly find it easy to love most all people, the exception to this is those with poor character, especially liars and obviously people prone to violence or abuse. There are certain aspects of our current culture that I find to be monstrous, but that doesn't mean that I consider my friends who condone or participate in these things to be monsters! I know that we all are doing the best we can to be the best we can with our own individual understanding of what that is. I am also not for a second suggesting that there's no possibility that I'm wrong. I am human, so I'm almost certainly wrong at least some of the time.

That being said, Where I believe that life, liberty or sacred innocence is at stake, I could not let something as shallow as a desire for social acceptance keep me from speaking up. I've done this before, and as one who is somewhat prone to self loathing anyway, I've found it very difficult to forgive myself. Tolerance of evil has taken us to some dark places in history, and I want to do my best to stand firm in the right place in my time. I don't mince words, I believe that more progress is made by stating things as they are, or as I perceive them to be, and I do communicate with humor. My humor is dry and sometimes sarcastic, and I could see someone who didn't know me well interpreting it as malice. Now, there are times when I have in this effort been thoughtlessly insulting, as I said. This was not only wrong, but it is a very ineffective way to change any one's mind. I am trying to improve this.

So, I'm starting this blog in the hopes that venting my obnoxious know-it-allness here will make it easier to restrain myself in my interpersonal relations and maybe improve my social life. Those of my friends and family who want to hear my opinion can come read my posts and I will be able to express myself and be more clearly understood than I could be in passing conversation or status updates and comment threads. Here's hoping I can stick to it! I welcome comments as well as civil debate, but know I will always keep my blog clean and hopefully uplifting. Thank you for hearing me out!