Justice

“Friend” is an idea that cannot be properly defined. I suppose I consider the people I care about and want to spend time with to be my friends. I don’t know why I care about them or want to spend time with them. Some friends I’ve known for years, and others I’ve known for hours. Truth be told, I can give no reason whatsoever for liking these people. Somehow, it is much easier to reconcile liking someone else for no reason than it is to accept that another likes me for no reason.

About a year ago, my friend Phillip Greenlief scolded me for being overly-concerned with whether others like me. Sometimes I do struggle with the fear that nobody likes me, but more than that, I struggle with accepting the reality that there is no justice in this world. The crux for me is not so much that I care about other’s opinions of me but the fact that if others don’t value my opinions, there can be no justice. For what is justice if not having the world behave according to our opinions?

Besides being an extremely likeable guy, Phillip is possibly the greatest saxophone player alive today. (You can find more about him and his music at his website at www.evandermusic.com.) If there were any justice in the world, Brittany Spears would be an unemployed stripper living on the streets and whoring herself out to support her drug addiction and Phillip would be rich and famous. But alas, there is no justice as my opinions are essentially inconsequential.

I am a self-reliant person. That means I don’t put a lot of stock in other’s opinions. I’m the kind of person that can never cheat on a test because if I don’t know the answer I sure as hell don’t think the idiot sitting next to me is going to know it either. I’d much rather make a mistake on my own terms than do something right on another’s. In order to maintain integrity, I feel it is very important to speak and act only according to my opinions without allowing myself to be unjustifiably swayed by the opinions of others.

My opinion, regardless of its validity, is important because it is mine. It is what makes me unique. Opinions can be altered and changed by others and myself, but they are the only means by which I can identify myself. (Memory and perception both fall under the category of “opinion.”) Opinions are the only thing I truly own. I am the sum total of my opinions. Ergo, the only way in which I can share myself with others is by expressing my opinion. How I express my opinions is called my personality or style, depending on the context. I am continually obsessed with attempting to express myself in a way which will allow others to successfully understand my opinions. That is why I spent so many years playing music, and that’s why I have this blog now.

Because I am my opinions, it seems reasonable that others must value my opinions if they are to like me. In reality, valuing my opinion would not bring about friendship but could enable my conception of justice to be realized. There are many people who continually support and value me regardless of my opinions. In fact, they apparently like me for no reason whatsoever. I am more honored and humbled to get a note from someone reminding me that they are my friend than I am frustrated and chagrined at failing to be understood. Others value my opinions because they like me, and not the other way around. My opinions and how I express them have an influence on whether I am liked, but there is a gestalt at work, whereby I am greater than the sum of them, at least in the eyes of my friends. That’s pretty awesome, but until my opinions are valued, there will never be justice, and that blows. I have no power to coerce another into valuing my opinions. Nor would I want to; that would imply that another could do the same to me. All I am empowered to do is value my own opinions and attempt to express them.

Enough of me and my existential tangents. To truly enjoy reading this post, every time I wrote “opinion,” change it to “onion.” By the way, this post began as an attempt to write about my friend Kris. Oops.