Humble – huh! Or more appropriately – huh? Actually more like – duh? The humility has been tossed overboard in the storm- thrashed waters long before it could even apologetically ‘cough’ its presence. Why, even the dictionaries define it in part as meekness and who wants that today. It’s a cut-throat world out there. Opinionating has become a way of life, even its very essence for most. The crucial assertion of individuality. It is the sole way of unequivocally stamping your own mark on the world around. And the mark is supposed to overwrite those left by others. Opinions today are ‘in your face’, aggressive, a challenge, a vote-garnering crowd gathering attempt even. More of a show of attitude than intellect. More about positioning than considered thought. More about ‘I know all so you’d better listen’ than let’s talk about it. There’s no room for even a shred of humility. One-upmanship at its sprightliest. The internet is about exchange – of ideas, thoughts, actions, possibilities blah blah blah and OPINIONS. Just check out our benighted keyboard warriors prowling the www who don’t even need to show their real names before going into the sabre-unsheathed IMHO mode.


It is not the calm of life out there but the turmoil of a courtroom, the mercilessness of the jungle or even the bloodiness of a battlefield. And you mustn’t loose an inch even though not a shard of courage is needed to hammer away on those plastic letters and numerals. Just nimble obedient fingers and self-belief – well-placed or misplaced. The attacks and the defense are pixels in contrast. It doesn’t matter if the issue is about the complexities of governance, the trickiness of enterprise, the genius of invention or the resilience of genuine human effort. Feel brave with your sabre, held point first, and charge ahead with the lexicon of one cerebrum – smug in the belief of it being the only genuine one around.


Remember how you felt when your father was of the ‘opinion’ that any youngster given a motorcycle will ride fast, become a loafer and eventually kill himself and/or someone else. Or a little further back in time when even two movies in a single month were opined as character deforming and that you were a gone case if allowed to so indulge. Those were the sharp ends of the sabre against your ribs. And the point stabbed even when you laughed. You wished ‘opinion’ was softer, pliable and humble but coming from the powers that were, from above you, it was hard as granite. The deception lay in the assumption of ‘mere’ opinion being benign by default and malleable by birth. Since it usually was voiced in a normal voice and the normalcy gave no clue to the bristle-rich hardness inside. You couldn’t get closer without getting painfully pricked. What you considered a human privilege turned out to be something immovable. And ever realize what happens when a deemed privilege becomes a postulated right? Go check on what the politicians do when they’ve won the elections. What is humbly requested for as a privilege becomes their right and the humility grotesquely mutates into autocracy. And yet they never fail in claiming humility as the essence of their diktats.


That opinions are double-edged would be obvious to even the blind – from the eye or the thought. There is none who has not felt that sharp stab on the ribs except perhaps the insane who have been called a ‘one-man-culture’ by a very wise one. Those who believe themselves to be the sole and wise occupants of the world. And yet the pain from the edge is forgotten – a remembrance that would show up as humility. But then isn’t an opinion devoid of the memory component, of content that acknowledges the recipients as equals, the same as the solo commandments of the one-man-culture. The insane. Isn’t an opinion a beam of light meant to illuminate and not just peter off into the distant darkness – just marking its presence and revealing nothing else? Is it not to be as futile as knocking the door of an empty house.


Sadly the majority of prevalent opinionating is like a lighthouse shining away to glory in waters none frequents. Or akin to a dog growling at its own reflection not knowing it is actually ‘it’. Humility as the ingredient makes opinion a part of a dialogue, a conversation that might lead it to evolve a cause to its effect. Honest humility accompanying an opinion is what makes it a thought with a soul worth preserving and evolving. That scathing one-liner, the sharp put-me-down and the angry challenge buries the rational and the intellectual beneath a slimy quagmire of negative emotions. Acidic, barren, ugly and therefore deserted.


The essence of interaction, of conversation lies in sharing and openness. And even though the words state IMHO, the content must reflect upon the honesty of the term. Condemned are we to reap what we sow. No escape from that. And so it comes full circle. None is perfect and the need to know is implicit with the need to learn. Do the insane in their singularity ever learn anything – even about their own insanity? Let the generic human pervade upon the obvious individual. Let learning pervade open the knowing. Still don’t get it? Try riding your motorcycle not on knowing but on your opinions. But don’t expect company by that hospital bed. After all doesn’t riding on your opinions make you a one-man-world eh? So no complaining when no one else shows up. IMHO of course!

Note: This Hard Torque was published in an earlier issue of the xBhp Magazine