Does Your Opinion Really Matter?

In August 1999, I flew to London, England for my semester abroad.  It was an amazing experience and there is a lot I could share with you about those five months, but for the purpose of this blog post, I just want to share with you a small part of one day.  

My friend, Laura, had her mom and sister visiting and we went to a variety of touristy places with them.  One of our stops was Speaker’s Corner.  It is a place where anyone can come with their soap box and talk about anything they desire as long as its lawful in the eyes of the police.  It was a memorable experience.  

There was a homeless guy sitting in an inflatable chair while drinking wine talking about strange parts of his life.  I also remember a man discussing his religious belief as an atheistic-Christian (kind of seems like an oxymoron to me).  

In that corner there were maybe 12 people dawning a variety of wardrobes, props and opinions.  We walked down the line of speakers and listened into bits of words they shared and would discuss our thoughts to what they said.  Some speakers captured our attention for awhile while others just had us for a sentence or two.  When we had our fill, we went off to the next item of sightseeing on our agenda.  

It was fun.  

I haven’t been back to Speaker’s Corner in London since that day.  That was eighteen years ago.  I’ve since survived Y2K, graduated college, moved states twice, gotten married, had kids and lived a lot of life.  

When I think about the fun we had at that corner, it is because it was a visit.  We were able to be entertained, then move on.  

Speaker’s Corner would not have been as fun if I lived there.

Yet, I do live there.   So do you. 

Its called Social Media.  

Everyone has two cents on practically any and every topic and each one of us feel the need to share such two cents every couple of seconds to add to our feed in the form of statuses, pictures, videos, memes, links, etc.  

Its not that your opinion doesn’t matter, its just it doesn’t always need to be said.  (And to be fair, there is a reason they compare opinions to bottoms, because - sorry - but not every opinion is pleasant).  I marvel how often some big thing happens in our world that I will see 300 people share the exact same sentiment.  

It gets overwhelming.  I stop paying attention and I am just no longer having fun.   Social media has become this necessary evil in my life with a few perks.  I still love the connection with friends from all over the world and timeline in my life.  I love that I can reach out and make my voice heard when it matters.  

I don’t want to do away with all we have in the internet age, but I just want to be able to visit Speaker’s Corner and NOT LIVE THERE!  

Can’t we use a little self-restraint and not share every opinion?  I recognize the irony of this topic in my very own blog post, here sharing my opinion, but if we all shared one opinion in our blogs once a week - I would love that!  Reality is, opinions come in at a speed rivaling the speed of light for many people, not once a week.  

If we truly want to have an impact on the world, then maybe we should speak less often so our words have more weight when we do need to use them.