Lent

Okay.  Lent begins.  No more opinions until Easter.  Ooh, how very, very restful.  I tell you, this day was full of opinions.

Oh – for those of you feeling bewildered and not knowing what I’m talking about: I’ve chosen to give up opinions for Lent.

This does not mean opinions won’t arise within my mind, I’ll just keep them to myself.

I intend still to express preferences – so if someone says, “Would you like some cheese on that or not?” I won’t be responding: “Whatever.”

I expect I’ll still say what I think, but try to express it as something other than a judgement/evaluation.  So I can say I really like yoghourt with prunes but not that yoghourt with prunes is delicious.  I can say I love the sun but not that sunlight is beautiful. At first glance that may seem rather pedantic, but I suspect it will be liberating. 

I was born into a family with decided views expressed in certain terms.  Its members never perceived the boundary between objective reality and personal viewpoint.  Thus it was that I grew up believing purple to be ugly, vulgar and hideous, “settee” to be a socially inferior term and sweet sherry to be contemptibly infra dig.  I was thirty before I came out about my penchant for Lemon Puffs, forty before I admitted to preferring sweet sherry and hating dry wine, and I never wore anything purple before I joined a religious organization that insisted upon it.

Opinions have bludgeoned me into submission my whole life long.   Being released into the wilderness where no opinions are looks like one glorious six-week holiday from here.

You are not bound by this foray of mine, of course: you will be entirely free to tell me as often as you like that in your opinion what I have just said is an opinion: because the great thing is I won’t be able to tell you if I agree with you or not.  You can just say it.

Me eating yoghourt with prunes.  In the sunshine.