I like new ideas, yes, even radical ones. The kind of statements that reach inside of you and grab you. They stop you in your tracks, make you think, and often change the way you think. They shake things up, and make you question your own thoughts on a subject, which can be a good thing. (Even when those around you think you’ve lost your ever loving mind.)
With a twenty-four news cycle, every book imaginable on all most every subject, and the internet I’ll be honest it’s easy not to ever question or think for myself. That’s why I love it when something comes along that grabs my attention and stirs me to consider something other than the way I’ve always seen it. My favorite teachers through the years were not the ones who told me what to think but those who challenged me to think. They’d get in my face when I gave a cliché answer and ask me what I really believed on the subject. I had to dig deep and would be surprised by my own answers.
If I’ve learned one thing in life it is that the longer I live the less I know, no one has the corner on all the truth, and questions, contrary to what I was taught, are very good. By asking them I have often found a new position to think from or sometimes it simply strengthens the one I already have. In no way have new ideas or questions diminished me, but they have challenged me.
The good that has come from being open to new possibilities is that I can hear someone who believes different from me and not become defensive. I can listen, hear another perspective, and walk away having learned something new about another person. In some ways it eliminates the fear of those that are different and obliterates the me verses you and us against them mentality.
I spent many years in a rigid system in which I was right and others who didn’t see it the same way were wrong. I was in they were out. I had it they didn’t and the list goes on. (As if I could possibly know.) But, life has its own way of challenging us by throwing everything our way at once and such was the case with me. For the first time I found that my pat answers weren’t enough, I had questions, and I needed to think through the new ideas I was hearing. I was stopped in my tracks, grabbed by those ideas, which changed little and yet changed the way I saw everything. I’ll admit that I’m cool with it, I’m a little less arrogant, and a tad nicer to be around.