Imagine Others Complexly

I have a tattoo on my wrist that reads XXIV for the year in which everything about me was turned upside down. I lost my faith and gained enlightenment..My world got much bigger and I felt ignorant of so much and this empowered me to have a hunger and thirst for knowledge only the younger, more curious version of myself could rival.

In the zest for life, I returned home from school and felt a mix of excitement to share the new things I'd learned but I suddenly felt a cold shiver. I knew that my talking about the beauty of philosophy, the elegance of science and the humility of admitting we don't know about the maker f the universe that itself perplexes us was not going to be greeted with applause.

But still I shared. In the safest way possible. On Facebook.  Away from the emotional faces and the smell of the air getting thick with tension as you told someone you believed their belief in God was irrational. People started to inbox me, asking what had gone wrong. At first it was puzzled questions from concerned friends but later the tone changed.

I begun retorting to replies to my posts with a level of sarcasm and destroy these points completely and take no prisoner's approach. the likes accumulated accordingly. People who supported my anti religious view liked what I wrote and those that didn't were equally quick with throwing likes at whoever disagreed.

But over time, these disagreements begun to trouble me.




I'm generally not an argumentative person. I take the stance that the things I am relatively secure in, I don't need to make other people believe. I don't need other people to believe the same as I do in order for us to get along. I enjoy listening to people describe the reasons they think certain things are good. Why they love paw paw for instance, or enjoy reggaeton(Grace of God help me!) .

I understand that it's so easy to be misunderstood. We give ourselves a measure of leeway in our own minds. We know what we mean when we laugh at something someone holds dear. We forget that the their person may be receiving this as an insult to their intellect or an infringement on what they hold dear.




This is one of my favorite quotes. It's something I am learning especially in the days when clap backs and shutting people down can be so easy. It's definitely not the easy thing to do. And often it leads to me having to exert effort in trying to understand what someone is really saying before I dismiss it or destroy it. Rather than attacking what I think they mean..


There are people who disagree with me and think this is a dangerous stance that allows for dangerous ideas to g by unchecked. But I disagree. i think silencing ideas is not the way, rather let ideas be let lose and engaged with so they can be stripped of their power when exposed to more enlightened ideas.

It's cliche' to say we need to learn to agree to disagree but I think it's more important for us to learn how to disagree without making the other person a caricature. To give them what we want, a chance to explain. A chance to be understood...Then after that..You can obliterate their point of view!! haha