All of us, at least once in our lifetime, would have had a chance to engage in a fiery conversation with our friends with different political orientations and felt the frustration as to how could they just not accept the faults of their political party, no matter what. Why does she/he support such people blind-folded even though we tried to give valid reasons to reject the same political party at all costs.
After one such conversation, it really started hitting me that I have to be politically updated to put forward valid points, factually, statistically and quantitatively to substantiate my opinion surpassing the knowledge of my peers and awe them with surprises that they do not want to hear.
Hence, I started watching political debates, started listening to top/popular journalist's interviews, started to see both sides of the arguments to derive my own opinions and counter-arguments that I can put forward in conversations, engaged in confirmation bias to seek information about what I wanted to see it as a truth, gave serious thoughts to subscribe to daily newspapers online as they seem to be more reliable than Youtube or any other social media and what not.
The emotion that was driving me was just that everything now is flawed and you have to believe in what I believe, for the world to be a better place and you better agree with me on this so that I can feel the happiness that everyone agrees with me and I have made the right call by supporting my guy.
As days progressed, after consuming a lot of content on these topics day in and out, almost two hours a day, every day, for a month, I started feeling a sense of negative emotion within me resonating with hopelessness, dissatisfaction, revenge mentality which invariably affects me in ways that I could not even find the reason for being in a bad mood. Somewhere in the back of my mind, these emotions or feelings were triggered as part of my daily content consumption which kept me in a state of war-mode during my daily chores.
Long back, I had consciously stopped consuming news as part of my daily habit for the same reason of avoiding negative thoughts and emotions on the lines of how bad the world is, how bad the people are, how bad the society is, how bad the government is, what a bad place that I live in, do you know how much grass is greener on the other side, I wish I was born in America, all such thoughts, which were capable of influencing my character and behaviour to a significant extent.
Somehow even without my conscious consent, I had succumbed to this political discourse with my friends and started again with those neglected habits and the same thoughts started affecting me big time. That is where it hit me, what am I doing right now with my valuable spare time and what am I trying to prove and to whom?
I strongly believe that taking sides in any aspect of life is very important, as it acts as the fundamental principles upon which we base our day-to-day decisions even sub-consciously.
But at the same time, whatever sides that we take, how does it matter to an other person who has gone through a similar thought process and arrived at a conclusion that they believe that is good for them?
No one is so naive to just accept the things that the other person is saying even if it would do a world of good for them. Even if someone accepts that way, then it is under the pretext that either they did not understand what you truly intended to convey or they just want to nod the head and ignore the conversation. So why to waste time and energy on something that is going to fail, anyways.
I'd prefer to have a mindset where arguments are something that should be avoided at any cost, unless it is ignited by curiosity.
If we want to truly listen to something or someone, then we would naturally incline towards a curious mindset to listen, ponder and ask the right questions that would positively impact our lives rather than trying to prove a point.
After one such conversation, it really started hitting me that I have to be politically updated to put forward valid points, factually, statistically and quantitatively to substantiate my opinion surpassing the knowledge of my peers and awe them with surprises that they do not want to hear.
Hence, I started watching political debates, started listening to top/popular journalist's interviews, started to see both sides of the arguments to derive my own opinions and counter-arguments that I can put forward in conversations, engaged in confirmation bias to seek information about what I wanted to see it as a truth, gave serious thoughts to subscribe to daily newspapers online as they seem to be more reliable than Youtube or any other social media and what not.
The emotion that was driving me was just that everything now is flawed and you have to believe in what I believe, for the world to be a better place and you better agree with me on this so that I can feel the happiness that everyone agrees with me and I have made the right call by supporting my guy.
As days progressed, after consuming a lot of content on these topics day in and out, almost two hours a day, every day, for a month, I started feeling a sense of negative emotion within me resonating with hopelessness, dissatisfaction, revenge mentality which invariably affects me in ways that I could not even find the reason for being in a bad mood. Somewhere in the back of my mind, these emotions or feelings were triggered as part of my daily content consumption which kept me in a state of war-mode during my daily chores.
Long back, I had consciously stopped consuming news as part of my daily habit for the same reason of avoiding negative thoughts and emotions on the lines of how bad the world is, how bad the people are, how bad the society is, how bad the government is, what a bad place that I live in, do you know how much grass is greener on the other side, I wish I was born in America, all such thoughts, which were capable of influencing my character and behaviour to a significant extent.
Somehow even without my conscious consent, I had succumbed to this political discourse with my friends and started again with those neglected habits and the same thoughts started affecting me big time. That is where it hit me, what am I doing right now with my valuable spare time and what am I trying to prove and to whom?
I strongly believe that taking sides in any aspect of life is very important, as it acts as the fundamental principles upon which we base our day-to-day decisions even sub-consciously.
But at the same time, whatever sides that we take, how does it matter to an other person who has gone through a similar thought process and arrived at a conclusion that they believe that is good for them?
No one is so naive to just accept the things that the other person is saying even if it would do a world of good for them. Even if someone accepts that way, then it is under the pretext that either they did not understand what you truly intended to convey or they just want to nod the head and ignore the conversation. So why to waste time and energy on something that is going to fail, anyways.
I'd prefer to have a mindset where arguments are something that should be avoided at any cost, unless it is ignited by curiosity.
If we want to truly listen to something or someone, then we would naturally incline towards a curious mindset to listen, ponder and ask the right questions that would positively impact our lives rather than trying to prove a point.