What if

July 2026

I like having opinions. A settled opinion feels like an accomplishment, proof that I thought about something and reached the end of the thinking. It saves me from having to look again. Once I know where I stand, I can stop. But I have started to suspect that the moment an opinion hardens is the moment it quietly stops being useful.

A confirmed opinion is comfortable because it closes a loop. I no longer have to sit in the discomfort of not knowing. The trouble is that the world does not close its loops. It keeps producing new evidence, new angles, ways of seeing the same thing that never occurred to me. A fixed opinion meets all of that with a wall, and it cannot take anything in, because taking something in would mean admitting the wall went up too early.

So I try to leave a small gap. Not full uncertainty, not refusing to believe anything, just a crack. Two words held quietly behind whatever I think: what if. What if I am wrong about this. What if the thing I dismissed years ago deserves another look now that I have changed. That small gap keeps me curious about the very things I am most sure of, which are usually the things I have examined the least, and it lets me update without it feeling like a defeat, because I never claimed the door was locked.

So I would rather not have confirmed opinions. I would rather have working ones, held with conviction but never sealed shut, always with two words waiting behind them. What if. It is a small thing to leave open. But it is the difference between a mind that keeps growing and one that decided, at some point, that it was finished.