The freedom to disagree
Today, I saw something that made me angry.
It was a simple idea: five things you love that I hate.
The word hate itself felt stronger than necessary, but what stayed with me was my own reaction to it.
For a moment, I was filled with anger. I thought, How can you hate something that I love?
And then, after the anger settled, I caught myself.
Why should she have to love what I love?
I believe in manifestation. It is something meaningful to me. It is a part of the way I understand certain things. Some people believe in it. Some people don't. Some may love it, some may question it, and some may reject it entirely.
And they are allowed to.
That realization took me somewhere beyond that one reel.
I have always believed that religion can be beautiful. The idea of faith, devotion, meaning, spirituality, and connection can be deeply peaceful. Yet religion has also been the centre of countless conflicts.
Why?
Perhaps, sometimes, it is not merely the belief itself that creates the conflict.
Perhaps it is the inability to accept that someone else can believe differently.
We become attached to our opinions. Sometimes so attached that another person's disagreement begins to feel like an attack on us.
Someone says, I don't believe what you believe, and instead of hearing a difference, we hear a rejection.
Then comes the need to defend.
Then the need to prove.
Then the need to make the other person wrong.
And somewhere between all of that, the person disappears behind the label.
Today, I realized that I had experienced a tiny version of that feeling myself.
I was angry because someone disliked something I valued.
But she had never promised to value what I value.
Her belief does not erase mine.
Her disagreement does not make me foolish for believing what I believe.
And my agreement with something does not make it universally true for everyone else.
The world can exist with thousands of opinions.
Thousands of beliefs.
Thousands of ways of understanding life.
We do not need to think alike to exist beside one another.
You can be a feminist. You can follow a different religion. You can believe in manifestation or think it is nonsense. You can see the world completely differently from me.
And still, I can respect you.
Respect does not mean agreement.
Acceptance does not mean surrendering your own beliefs.
It simply means recognizing that another human being is allowed to have a mind of their own.
And perhaps this is where observation matters.
If I had stopped at my first reaction today, I would have only seen her.
I would have called her wrong.
I would have defended myself.
I would have turned her opinion into a problem.
But when I paused, I saw me first.
I saw my anger.
I saw my attachment to my own beliefs.
I saw how easily disagreement could feel personal.
And that made me understand something I had previously only observed from a distance.
Perhaps this is what happens when people begin fighting over religion too.
Perhaps somewhere beneath the arguments is a human being thinking:
My belief matters to me. Why can't you understand that?
And another human being thinking the exact same thing.
Neither necessarily needs to abandon what they believe.
They simply need to stop demanding that the other person believe it too.
That is what I want to remember.
The world does not need one opinion to become peaceful.
It needs people who can hold their opinions without turning them into weapons.
And perhaps the philosophy I am learning for myself is this:
Observe before you label.
Question before you condemn.
Understand before you assume.
And when you feel anger toward another person, do not forget to observe yourself, too.
Because sometimes the most important person to understand in an argument is not the person standing opposite you.
It is the person inside your own mind.
