On Opinions

I am normally a laid-back person. I don't care about many things that are not related to me. Heck, I don't even care about that many things that are related to me. I say I have no opinion or no preference all the time.

By and large I'm still the same old me. I have grown somewhat opinionated in certain aspects along the way, however. I don't know what was the tipping point, what was the last straw to break the camel's back. Those aren't the important in the grand scheme of things. What is important is that I realise there is no such thing as no opinion, there is only good opinion and bad opinion.

More often than not, when I take on more responsibilities either in life or in work, I have to form a way of thinking, which leads to opinions on how things should work. This is not really philosophy of life. I refuse to use that word that because the level of discussion in this post doesn't qualify.

The reason I have become somewhat opinionated lies in the fact that I have had a lot more interactions with humans that with conflicting opinions in the past two years at work. Not that I shunned away from interaction with real humans, but my line of work consisted mostly of interactions with machines (which could be considered both a bless and a curse).

Inevitably, when talking to different people with different opinions, I form mine. I need to either agree or disagree with them. I can do neither without my own opinion.

This is both good and bad. It's good because I have gotten to the point where I can have consistent view of the big picture and actually push things forward. It's bad because that blinds me, shutting down a whole lot of new possibilities.

And to be honest I become wary of being too entrenched in a position as I become more and more opinionated. As said, there is only good or bad opinion. Entrenched myself in a wrong position caused by bad opinion won't end well. But there is no way to tell accurately which one is good or which one is bad. In principle I think everybody agrees a well-thought opinion is better than one that comes up random, so in reality I try hard to form well-thought opinion. I think that is the best one can do.