IMHO !! Really?

Excuse me. If you are that humble, you will not have an opinion!! That's the first thought that I ever get when I see that phrase/abbreviation. Now. I continue my not so humble opinion!!!

"Prejudice is a great time saver. You get to form a opinion without wasting time "

E.B. White-- American writer

There are sometimes that I have beheld people being trodden upon by prejudice or preorientation. By preorientation, I mean the premature ideas of a personality formed by an accquaintance. Say : You go to A's party. You have met B who is at the party before sometime. Now B, as soon as you enter, talks about you to C. By the time, you get around to talking to C, you shall have been judged a hundred times, criticised scores more.

If it one thing to form opinions without even have met somebody, it is even worser to tarnish somebody's image without have spoken with them for 10 minutes and that too because they chose to have a different opinion.

For example, you are talking about Asin. A comments that she looks positively ugly. B takes offense immediately. A and B havent even conversed ever and their first talk without having respects for opinions ends up in blows. Will A or B's opinion towards each other help them anywhere else? No. In each's friend circle, they shall be criticised, ridiculed and the extent of their crime magnified a hundred fold.

There was a recent circumstance where my friend was penalised for being close to someone. As always, there was somebody else who wanted to be close to this somebody. Because of pure and uncalled for jealousy, this friend of mine was put to tribulations!!!

I am writing about this for my friend was a victim to it and I realised a few minutes ago that I had been taken for a ride too.

When I am not comfortable with a person's style of doing things, I tell him my opinion and move out. But I dont go about talking about him to all and sundry. Even the closest of my friends shall not know unless I am hurt by the proceedings. If not, it remains a pebble in the well. But I am not adopting the holier than thou attitude.

In an environment like the one America offers, it is possible for us to come out of the narrow thinking and take people as they are and present ourselves the same way without inhibition. We were more powerful in our beliefs and even more in protecting them that we lost track of the notion that everyone has the right to make a decision/have a opinion and stick by it. Also due to the years and years of servility, we adopted the method of passing on things by mouth to ear and spoil the impressions about someone. Again we forget, everybody has a right to form their own opinions.

One of the most irritating forms of opiniations is prejudice. Man!! Have you ever read the "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen. It is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. It talks about the effects of prejudice in the settings of pre modern England.

Prenotions, prejudgements and prejudice--. Man seems to be enamoured of getting ahead of time. So much that he actually decides a person character at the first mention of the individual.

Sometime before, I was engaged in a pastime with a group of vetti fellow students about judgements and decisions. It was one of the activities that made my mind prompt itself that I should have been teaching management somewhere ( :)) :)).Tsk. Tsk! Conceit!!!)

The game goes like this : The person in D chair shall go ahead and say a word. All others shall guess about it. It maybe an animal, person, thing, place. Only that there shall be only a word and it should be native. Only the phenotic shall help..The word should be put forward with an emotion.

We had very very interesting answers( Chihuahua had the choice of being an romantic hawaiian island or the tallest peak in north eastern Somalia!!) Mary Dream Jane : wow!! The name just evoked the poets in us. :)) :)).

We got to learn that each of us are prejudiced in his or her own way and even the sound of pronunciation of a word (with what emotion it is expressed) completely changed the way we formed opinions. More so when the one in question was a near friend or a relative.

"One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed." --Friedrich Nietzsche (German scholar)

So why am I am ranting about opinions now that I have umpteen number of them in stock. I realised that as much as I am hurt by opinions that people hold of me, they must also feel bad about the opinions I had about them. But the following quote just quashed it.

"We probably wouldnt worry about what people think of us if we could know how seldom they do"--Olin Miller

The worst worst worst opinion I ever ever ever heard about me was when somebody at a local office enquired my accquaintance if I was gay. "It was a joke, of course", laughed my friend with nervous laughter. This was formed from her pronunciation of my name "GAYathri".

I WAS SO GODDAMNED ******* ************djhgfsjf #$%$@#$ ##!$$%#$%#% that I went

berserk in the office and stomped out amid flying debris. I had 10 boyfriends invented out of thin air but that was before I read this :

" I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect" : Edward Gibbon(English Historian)

And when people you have never met end up thinking ill about you. Then. Then you will know what hate is. If you find the person who was responsible for it. !! Or rather if I find that person!!.

Think of this :

You are being invited very graciously to a party. The members at the party(or so you think) are absolutely new people and you are looking forward to meet them and form a new gang. You turn up looking like a fresh lily and some jealous nut comments "She looks like she will steal your boyfriend". Gone are the chances you will ever find a sympathetic let alone an emphathetic listener.

So I sum up, at the risk of being at your opinion's end, You try and get yourselves a opinion on everything in this world. Then. Then. Then you will realise that you are being talked about much and remain the centre of attention.

Otherwise send looks that are daggers across and pray that they are dead and talk about them after that!!!

Have a great day. Week. Month. Whatever. Your choice. Your opinion. I dont care about it!! I really dont. As far as they are against me!!

Vox Populi! Vox Dei!

Welcome to the club Mi Lord!!