The tale of two sides and curiosity

The other day, I walked into the room. Someone was speaking while the others sat at the edge of the seat, rapt with attention.”Huh.. that’s weird, what brought all this on?” I thought as I strained to catch the gist of the conversation…

Knowing “the Two Sides”

One key view he held was that you should try and see all sides of a coin. This applies to real life situations as well.

Don’t comment until you’ve stepped into the other person’s shoes. If you’ve never been to where the person has been before, you are in no position to give a well-reasoned response.

I do agree that we shouldn’t judge people for something when we don’t have perfect knowledge of his overall situation. However, although we may not be able to judge, I am sure we are entitled to our own comments (whether this is aired is another matter), based on our own personal (and limited) experience in addition to holding the societal guidelines as a comparison.

(By societal guidelines, I mean established understandings that the society has “agreed on” collectively. For example, it can be something as simple as current fashion trends to something as complex as legislation.)

Why don’t you try everything?

In a similar vein,  another main point that he made was that life is short and thus you are curious, try it.

While I agree to the above in principle, it just aren’t that simple in reality.

It is true that we should try our hands on whatever life has to offer, but what he was implying was not limited to new sports or some new novelty you may have wanted to pick up. He explicitly extended it to include drugs and anything under the sun. As long as you’re curious, try it. Just make sure you know how to walk away from it.

Wouldn’t the above thus further imply that all addicts are addicts by choice and they just choose not to walk away? In certain ways they did choose it, but we ignore the fact that the drugs in itself affects the decision.

While “out-of-the-box” thinking and actions necessitate due consideration and actioned upon, I feel that logical and innovative thinking must meet practicality sometimes.

While taken at face value, we could definitely learn alot by experiencing everything ourselves. It may have more impact on our own personal growth. But we must remember that societal taboos are  taboos for a reason. Society has learned from the past, experience its effects and thus seek to prevent it. We don’t need to experience a catastrophe first hand to know the destruction it will cause. Similarly, in all practicality, we don’t need to learn everything by experiencing ourselves. We can learn by experiencing through others.