I know I’m not allowed to write about certain ideas. I’m not referring to some top-secret list of banned topics here or admitting that there are certain sentences I’ve decided to never put into print. No, I’m talking about YOU, reader, and how there are certain limits to what you are willing to read that I remain mindful of whenever I sketch out an idea for a post.
What kinds of topics are these? I think any topic where the reader was more interested in my position rather than my thinking would qualify. To put it another way, if I thought a reader would only skim to see my conclusion, then I'm probably not going to write the piece. Topics about which a reader already has an opinion are good candidates for this consideration. I imagine a reader who starts reading about such a topic will stop reading at some point and think – wait… I don’t care about Tim’s thinking because I already know my conclusion... but does he agree with me? Fully distracted, I imagine this reader would immediately start scrolling up and down the post until my stance was identified.
The attitude I’m describing reflects a simple mentality – who cares about the thinking when all it leads to is a position? I consider such a response to a written idea as the reading equivalent of an interruption (and a loud one, at that). Instead of hearing the writer out or doing the hard work necessary to follow the line of thinking, we as readers start skimming along until we determine whether the writer is on our team. There is so little point in writing about a topic I expect the reader to skim rather than read that I think I would be better off just publishing a list in these cases.
How can you identify these topics for yourself, reader? I’d start by thinking about the topics you respond to by saying - that’s interesting, but only because the way I do it is a little different. There’s nothing wrong about this approach, of course – everyone is entitled to an opinion. But it’s hard to get better at almost anything when thinking in this way. I didn’t get better at running by hearing about someone’s technique and saying – oh wow, well, the way I do it is different – and I certainty didn’t get any better at eating healthy by explaining my meal planning to someone who ate better than me.
I guess the main idea here is that an obsession over positions can distract us from learning. This usually manifests through an interruption, often because of an insistence on knowing the ending before hearing the story. As readers, we cripple ourselves when we cut writing down to a list of conclusions. And we writers enable sloppy reading whenever we strip our work bare of all traces of thinking. We are all entitled to our opinions, of course, and it is important not to forget this. But in what other context excepting holding opinions is ‘entitled’ used with any positive connotation? Instead of feeling entitled to a position, a better way might be to earn our positions through the hard work of challenging our own thinking, understanding the thinking of others, and being open to whatever that means about the opinions we’ve hold so dear.
