Your opinion MATTERS to us.

Martha asked my opinion of Abdul El-Sayed yesterday. As most of you are aware, El-Sayed is the Democratic Socialist senate candidate from Michigan who won his primary race this week. I told her I don’t have an opinion, because I do not. The reason I do not have an opinion is because I have too many opinions already and I am not willing to invest in any more at this time.

Opinions are an exhausting byproduct of the age. We’re inundated with them, overrun with them. I have opinions stuffed into every possible spare neuron in my brain.

The tired expression about opinions and assholes is no longer apt: although each of us has only a single anus, we contain an infinite number of opinions. If opinions really were like assholes, we’d be all asshole. And, in truth, some of us are.

Must we all have so many opinions? I don’t see how it’s possible to keep adding to our storehouses of them without something giving. I know it’s not possible for me.

I cannot possibly formulate any further opinions until I’ve done something with the ones already in my possession. To that end, I am going to jettison some former opinions in the hopes that, by doing so, I will free up additional space for new ones.

I hereby declare that, from here on out, I no longer have an opinion on the following matters:

• Both Norman Fell and Don Knotts provided terrific antagonists for Jack on Three’ s Company. I see no need to rank one above the other at this time.

• On the matter of whether or not a hot dog is a sandwich, I’m content with either opinion. One can make the case either way and it’s no longer a matter of interest to me which way the debate resolves.

• We can speculate on whether a gorilla would beat up a shark or vice versa but my opinion on the matter is entirely dependent on where the fight takes place. In water, the shark has the advantage. On land, the gorilla.

• Each Beatle made an important contribution to the whole. Same with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

• Pretty much every brand of underwear you can purchase at Macy’s is going to be fine.

• To Debbie Jaimeson and Rochelle Tilly: when we were in fourth grade you asked me which of you I thought I was prettier. At the time, I said Debbie but it was a hasty decision made under time pressure. I hereby withdraw my endorsement.

• I no longer have a favorite anything, except pretzel brand. (Rold Gold)

There are other, less weighty opinions for me to consider eliminating from my retinue. The one about shellac, for example. And the one about the spelling of the word “razzmatazz” which has always seemed to me to contain at least one too many z’s.

Unfortunately, even as I dump certain opinions, others rush in to fill the void. The subjective life is also the selective life. We can’t help it. Were we able to turn off the opinion-making switch, it seems like we would also turn off the thing that makes us human.

We don’t merely have opinions. We manufacture them. Presented with almost any choice - a restaurant, a font, a vacation destination, whether socks belong in bed -our brains immediately begin sorting, ranking, judging. It’s less a hobby than an involuntary organ function. We practically secrete opinions.

Does my cat have opinions? He doesn’t seem to. He has preferences for sure, but I’ve never heard him make a single caustic remark about anything.

What must it be like to go through life without opinions? It’s a difficult thought experiment because our human brains are comparison machines. This or that. My cat’s brain, on the other hand (paw?) does not appear to form opinions on much of anything beyond which texture upon which he would like to sit and stare at nothing. I have tried to do the same but, rather than feeling serene, I just wind up feeling itchy.

The entire business of being human is such a messy and insular one. Those are opinions, of course, but unlike most of my others, this one is backed with decades of lived experience. The opinion is something like a flare lighting our way. Without them, we wouldn’t know how to put one foot in front of the other. It’s why babies are so stupid. They haven’t formed opinions about anything and so they just lie there and coo. Adorable, sure, but useless when it comes to sorting out the best 19^th century Russian literature.

I may yet form an opinion on Abdul El-Sayed beyond “he seems fine,” but I’m in no rush. Better, I think, to spend some of the time I might have spent researching him to sitting on my chair staring at nothing. At least for a few moments. At least until the itchiness kicks in.