beyond fluctuating opinions

If we think about when we were kids, we kept changing our opinions. Once a kid wants to be an autorickshaw driver for a few weeks. Then for the next 6 months he wants to be a pilot. Then next 2 years he wants to be a tabla musician. Then he thinks of becoming an army officer for next 2 years! Just an example of the way opionins keep changing… almost anyone can relate to this. (And hopefully atleast some of us may never outgrow this! 😉 ) Something that’s so terribly crucially vitally important at one time, looks so trivial later on in hindsight. Eg ideas based on somebody else’s ideals, or some philosophical books, they don’t generally stand the test of time.

But then why do opinions change? 

Maybe as new information gets learnt about the world, the opinion changes?

But then, aren’t there any opinions that do not fluctuate much – which do withstand the ravages of time?

Maybe these are the opinions that are based more on actual experience, one’s own experience?

Some close to Sanjay since his childhood who’ve been victimized with many of his writings since then – have confidently speculated that he only writes because he has nothing better to do. No responsibilities, no major ambitions, none of all that kind of jazzy thing. They were sure he’d sooner or later lose his interest once he got into a job. And he started working, but kept writing. “Once he gets married, then he won’t have any time…”  Then he got married but did not slow down. “Once he has a kid, that’s the end of all his nonsense” And he had a son, but he kept writing,

Whatever he wrote were merely notes about what he learnt. (Last thing he really cared for was any publicity or name as a writer. For a profession, he’d stick to his computers and engineering for the forseeable future).

And when he looked back occasionally at his notes (not everything on his site), he was expecting that opinions had changed over time. But he was amazed to realise that there was a significant fraction of what he’d written, even many years ago, which he could still stand by – hadn’t changed.

One of the examples about a timeless opinion: to always keep learning - to keep on striving beyond the safety and security of what he “knew” – into the unknown.

Any other examples of your own, or any other opinions on fluctuating/timeless opinions, you could share it here. 🙂

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PS: One of my friend’s favorite quotes is “Opinions are like a$$oles – everyone has one but nobody wants to smell anybody else’s” So in the context of this post, rather than taking the word opinion too literally, one could also substitute it with: ideas, thoughts, beliefs, etc.