Chris Han­nah encour­ages peo­ple to share their per­spec­tive:

By shar­ing your out­look, you’re open­ing your­self up to oth­ers. Which helps every­one keep a bit more of an open mind, and rein­forces the fact that not every­one thinks the same.

There might be the risk of offend­ing peo­ple, but that shouldn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly be a sole rea­son to stop doing some­thing. Because by tak­ing that risk, you’re express­ing your­self. You might not nec­es­sar­i­ly be right about some­thing, and you might not even agree with your­self in the future. But that’s fine, because opin­ions evolve, and per­spec­tives shift.

I’ve been think­ing about this a lot recent­ly, and Chris’ arti­cle gave me that final push to get my thoughts orga­nized on the topic.

For as opin­ion­at­ed as I am, I fear shar­ing those opin­ions most of the time. Because of the reli­gion I was raised in, I got real­ly good at shar­ing opin­ions on ​“safe” things. As you might know, I’m nev­er shy about giv­ing my per­spec­tive on tech­nol­o­gy, design and devel­op­ment, or things like movies and TV shows.

It’s fair­ly new for me, how­ev­er, to have and express opin­ions about pol­i­tics, LGBTQ+ issues, or even crit­i­cize my for­mer reli­gion. These are things I was raised not to talk about. I used to believe that God’s King­dom was the solu­tion to humanity’s prob­lems, and there­fore had nev­er vot­ed in an elec­tion before the 2020 primary.

I used to believe that LGBTQ+ peo­ple were prac­tic­ing some­thing that God hates, and would be destroyed because of it in God’s com­ing Judg­ment day. Up until two and a half years ago, I hadn’t stopped to ever ques­tion these beliefs.

I guess what I’m try­ing to say is that it scares the shit out of me to ever have beliefs like this again, so I’m nat­u­ral­ly a bit fear­ful of express­ing my opin­ions pub­licly. I also know that fam­i­ly and friends some­times read these words, and aren’t hap­py to learn my new per­spec­tive on things.

But what I’ve learned in ther­a­py, and Chris con­firms above, is that it’s ok to offer our per­spec­tive. And it’s ok for that per­spec­tive to be wrong. For most of my life, I’ve seen many things as black or white; either some­thing is right or it’s wrong. But life isn’t like that. Nuance is every­thing. Matu­ri­ty in life is not hav­ing the ​“right” per­spec­tive all the time, it’s being open to chang­ing that per­spec­tive when pre­sent­ed with new information.

My pur­pose has nev­er been to offend or hurt peo­ple. This blog’s pur­pose is to be a record of me, how I’m feel­ing, and what I think about things for myself. It’s the jour­nal I keep for future Tim to read. Some­times our per­spec­tives will align, oth­er times we’ll dis­agree; and that’s ok.