Aliveness lives in openness and curiosity
We are all biased, soaked in cultural influence, stories, interpretations and worldviews.
To think otherwise is to adopt a position of ignorance.
The purely objective opinion is fiction. We cannot entangle self from context.
Confronting this, that we all have our biases, we might be courageous enough to consider our biases. What informs it? Did I choose it? Am I a pawn on someone else’s cultural chess board? How much influence does my bias hold over me?
I watch myself carefully. I watch the places where I am open to others’ opinions, worldviews and ideas. It is in my field of openness I like myself most. I am interested in understanding your opinion, why you believe that, what makes this such a big deal to you. I seek to understand and learn. Perhaps in being open I will learn that my belief is true but also partial. That through listening to others, I might refine it. This does not mean I have to agree with everything the other holds. But I am at least curious enough to enquire first.
I watch where I am suspicious, arrested. This is often a good thing. Caution is a boundary. I can stay in the curious but cautious place for a long time until my synthesis informs my belief.
When I am closed, which is the equivalent of holding a stand that I am right and you are wrong, this is the place of fundamentalism, arrogance, righteousness. I know this place well. When I am in this territory I like myself the least. Nothing can penetrate a closed position. There is no possibility. No light. Seeing myself here I take out my psychic axe and shatter my walls of righteousness. This place is not alive.
Aliveness lives in openness and curiosity.
Photo Taken July 31st 2023
