A good friend told me he experimented with something totally out-there: agreeing with everything.
He said he made a conscious effort, as a sort of experiment, to find a way to agree with every statement, worldview, attitude and belief he came across, no matter how incorrect or crazy it seemed. The results were pretty invigorating. Not so much that he found new value to beliefs he previously discarded, but more because his enjoyment of life, resilience to the unsavory words and actions of others, and ability to find laughter and entertainment all around him increased.
Give it a try, just for a day. Resolve to accept everything you hear today as true. See what happens. Every opinion has some kind of truth in it, even if twisted or put out of focus in some way. Look for the nugget you can agree with.
If you’re a big sports fan and you see a post about how sports are shallow, and numb children to violence, and are corroding societal values, agree with it. Find the interpretation of the statement that you could see value in, decide to take the statement as such, and without qualifiers say to yourself, “That’s true.” When you see a comment on the post that says, “You small-minded fool, sports are uplifting and a great way to channel aggression and tribal instincts in a playful and non-harmful context.”, say to yourself, “That’s true”, without giving further explanation to the apparent contradiction. Find a way to be mentally at ease with granting the label “true” to both statements.
I’ve tried this a few times and have been surprised at just how entertaining and challenging it can be. It requires some serious mental stretching and imagination, but it’s an addictive kind of game; I found myself looking for more and more extreme claims, just to test my ability to treat them as true in some essential form.
Rebuttals and rejoinders and back-and-forth over ideas are fun and productive. Analysis – the systematic division, categorization, and counter-position of concepts – is fruitful. But it also comes naturally, and often too emphatically. Try a radically accepting approach that synthesizes everything, just for the fun of it.
This blog post is true. So is your objection to it.