Lets play The Similarities Game. To win, you must determine what the three things listed below have in common. Hint: It has to do with me (What else is new, right? I'm very conceited.) Also, of note is the fact that I don't think the answer is obvious, so if anyone gets it right, it probably means you know me really, really well.
Okay, the 3 things are:
1) Football.
2) Seafood.
3) Philosophy.
Give up yet? Well, time's up anyhow.
The above are all things for which my opinion has done a complete 180-degree turn. That is, I originally despised each, yet today, absolutely love all three.
I have a vivid memory of declaring my hatred for each. When I was younger, I used to say I hated football because "it is just a bunch of guys running around with helmets yelling and smashing into each other." Yet, sometime around the 2001 Gator Bowl trip (when Virginia Tech, led by Michael Vick, beat Clemson and I almost melted in awe of his talent), this opinion completely disintegrated and my love of football became so great that I had to make my screen name reflect it.
For years I thought seafood was absolutely disgusting, and even bet my dad $20 that that would never change. Although I still haven't paid up (sorry, Dad!) I clearly have lost this bet, as I have tried and loved tons of different types of seafood in the past couple of years.
The last one, philosophy, is more of a recent change, and the one the inspired me to write this post. In fact, I didn't even realize my opinion about it had changed until a few days ago. Just like football and seafood, I used to hate philosophy. Posing all those questions... going around in circles... never coming to any definitive conclusions... blah, blah, blah, it was all so frustrating! I took Bioethics in college and I would skip class because it seemed so pointless. I mean, why couldn't they just give me the answers so I could spit them back out on the test!? Interestingly, now, like the other items listed, it has claimed quite a sizable amount of space in my brain (or heart, depending on which you prefer to think of as holding the things that matter).
So why these changes of heart/brainspace? For football and seafood, it probably was simply a function of me keeping an open mind and being willing to try new things or re-conceptualize my views. And for philosophy, I guess its more of the same. The thing is, the more I experience and learn, the more I realize how little I know, and how definitive answers are rare, if they even exist. I'm at a point in my life where few things seem concrete and all I can really think to do is pose questions and ponder the possible answers, without reaching a solution. So my annoyance with philosophy's lack of answers has dissipated, and I now think that it wasn't a very reasonable demand to make of it in the first place. So where does this leave me? Apparently, it leaves me more of the same - a laundry list of questions. Will I ever get the answers? Don't know. Is this just a phase of uncertainty that will pass and down the road everything will become clear? This too, is unclear.
This could be seen as a bad thing, however, I think I'll choose to see it differently. If nothing or close to nothing is certain, that means that every possibility is available. Life doesn't pigeonhole us, so why should we do it to ourselves? And hey, atleast I can count on the constant instability. I guess for now I'll just hold to that and ponder away on a blog. It really is funny though. If someone would have told me a year ago that I'd be posing philosophical questions on a blog, I'd have laughed at them. I'm telling ya, if nothing else, these 180-degree shifts sure do keep me on my toes.
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