Opinion: Being less opinionated leads to the death of your soul

Maryam Tello, Opinions Editor

Two rams butting heads. Photo/Maxime Gilbert/Unsplash

The title seems ridiculous, being less opinionated is a good thing. The world would be much better off if people admitted they didn’t know enough to form opinions about certain things. You think as you glance at the title twice, close the tab, and continue walking onto the beautiful campus of U of M-Dearborn. Past the green grass and quaint picnic tables behind the University Center, off-campus Christian organizations or speakers attempt to talk to you about god.

You tell them you don’t have any strong opinions on religion as you scurry along, in fact, you don’t feel any particular type of way about anything really. Is this true? No. You’re filled with thousands of opinions, bubbling inside of you, waiting for a chance to float to the surface. Being nice people, they offer you free pizza; A warm triangular slice of mediocrity covered with tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese. No pineapples or banana peppers in sight. It’s bland, easily digestible, and inoffensive. People with no opinions aren’t polarizing, but like the pizza, they aren’t memorable either.

It is not a fear of dogmatism that’s holding us from expressing our opinions. Most of the time, we would just rather not trade the security and safety that comes with being passive. There are dangers to being nonconfrontational, as Martin Luther King noted, writing from his jail cell in Birmingham: the greatest obstacle for the civil rights movement was not the Ku Klux Klan but the moderate who is “more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.” That is no way to live. In doing so we get washed away in the hourglass of time, buried under millions of sand grains, because we didn’t find it worthwhile to vocalize our thoughts when we had them.

Our world is crafted from shades of gray, but that’s more reason to infuse it with some color. Let your thoughts be the light that guides your way. Meanwhile, you can submit a short article to The Michigan Journal. We also have a column titled “Ask Maryam” where you can air your grievances, rant, ask for advice, and get a response from our opinions editor. To do so email maryamt@umich.edu.

We would love to hear from you, even if it’s as simple as which building is your favorite on campus or what Picasso’s can do to improve their mac and cheese recipe. Feel free to talk about bigger issues too; tell us your thoughts on current events. Share your political, religious, philosophical, and social opinions with us. We ensure that our editors will convey your opinions, unadulterated, regardless of what we think of them, because everyone deserves the chance to ponder the world around them.

As Socrates once said, an unexamined life is not worth living.