30 Days of Truth- Day Two

Ok. something I love about myself. Hmmmm...I haven't thought about it as much as I usually do when I try to draft a post. Usually I work it out in my head somewhat, then try to get the words down, and then work on the organization part so there is some coherency, and then tweak it. I am a constant tweaker which makes it hard to keep up with daily posts. I also like to have a more conversational feel to my writing when I am writing here (with lots of asides which I typically put in parentheses) so I tend to be all over the place at times. So I am gonna go all stream of consciousness here and let the words flow...

To pick one thing I love about myself is difficult. I am my hardest critic I would say and I may sell myself short at times and at times lack confidence...wait yesterday was what I hated about myself and here I am going on and on about the negative. I guess it's hard to say good things about myself at the risk of sounding conceited, or worse deluded. But I would have to say that I think my open mindedness is the thing I love best about myself. That is a broad concept that can include some other qualities I like about myself. My compassion and kindness toward others. My acceptance and tolerance of those different than me. My willingness, or rather compulsion, to learn about other ways of thinking, even if it clashes with my current state of thought and may at times anger me (especially when the way of thinking is not open minded).

Looking ahead I know religion and politics are coming up on another day so I will have a chance to expound more on those topics, but open mindedness is certainly something that challenges those constructs. In order to have faith or belief in one thing means that you have to abandon, and in some cases vehemently reject, any idea that is in contrast with that belief. I just have a hard time with that. I mean time and space is so vast, so diverse, so limitless, it would be so smug and elitist to think that just because I happened to be a woman born in the late 1960s to a middle class Catholic family that the world view that most of my social group adheres to is the one and only way. It is a conundrum of sorts that really puts me at odds with organized religion, or politics for that matter.

I feel like my opinions and beliefs are dynamic and fluid, they can be ever changing depending on new things I learn or new ways of looking at things as well as the situation at hand. Although I can't say that I will always understand others' beliefs that are vastly different from mine. However, I don't really have to. All I can say is that I support their right to hold those beliefs, otherwise I would be a hypocrite. Just because it may not be a belief that I necessarily share, doesn't have to mean that one is right or one is wrong. I don't need to tear down another's beliefs to validate mine. It does not threaten me in any way to acknowledge competing beliefs exist. What I do take issue with is that not everyone opens their minds to this possibility.