We must convey empathy, compassion and tolerance, instead of passing an opinion. For many people, life is centred on what they have to deal with, particularly around brain damage.
It must be difficult for those who are born normally, then have something happen, for them to have to adapt into something that physically and emotionally changes them and their personalities.
Although we learn to adapt, it’s often made all the more difficult, because of other people’s lack of understanding, and already formed opinions on what we deal with. Unless anyone walks a mile in another person’s shoes, they can never know what it feels like, yet they go on to form opinions as if they know exactly how things are.
Brain damage is unique to the individual. There is very little understanding on how the damaged brain affects that particular individual, therefore it is enormously difficult to apply text book generalisations with any real accuracy.
There is another train of thought that when we spend our time continually offering opinions, we leave little time to think about and work on our own life.
Passionate blog Ilana. The problem is that some people deliver their opinions flagrantly, without moral responsibility or social conscience. It's all about ego and ignorance in a sense.
But it hurts when opinions affect the hidden side of you, the side that you want someone to understand and nurture with a trustworthy voice.
Thanks Tim. Yes, your response is absolutely spot on. It's probably a little bit of both, ego and ignorance.
When we come from a place of care, we make it our way to know and be interested in what someone else has to deal with and that's right. When the ego acts and talks for us we will mostly come from a place of ignorance.
I absolutely agree with you. Without coming from a place of care, our opinions will always be delivered flagrantly, without moral responsibility or social conscience, particularly if we take the high moral ground, think we know and won't back down.
Well, there's an expression that I like about it! 'Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one!" Crude but effective, in dealing with people's opinions!
People have been telling me their's for most of me life, sometimes real and sometimes implied. Most of mine were what I was forced to believe by people who didn't really have any of their own.
My opinions never mattered when it came to decisions that would affect our lives; so it's no wonder that I never felt like it was okay.
I have wasted most of my life feeling that way; but finally realizing that it is okay now. I can actually live my own life the way I want to and not by everyone else's rules.
One of the biggest problems in the world, is people trying to force their opinions on everyone else. They expect people to live the same way they do, even if it is so very sick and twisted.
People really can't judge how a person lives their life if they haven't walked in your shoes. They say really stupid things like, I know how you feel when they really don't have a clue.
They tell me things like, 'just get over it' when they didn't have such a traumatic childhood and oblivious parents! They are always shouldering on me about what I should do; without thinking that maybe I don't know how.
It has taken me so long to finally realize that other people's opinions don't really matter, since they're not the ones having to live my life!
It's very difficult to know what to do when you're told and not supported, shown or encouraged to be able to make your own choices, form your own opinions. I get that. That was my own life.
I believed it mattered what others thought of me and still do to a certain extent, but learned very fast that whatever I did, others would always have their opinions.
I also learned that no matter what we do, people will see what they want to see and have their opinions, which are theirs and that's fine. We don't have to convince others; what we believe to be true.
As long as we believe what we believe that's all that really matters. As you say you're living your life, no one else. What matters is what you think.