You Don't Have to Have an Opinion

The news breaks. The group chat lights up. Someone is wrong online, confidently, in public.

You feel the pull to weigh in.

Notice how it feels like an obligation. As if the event isn’t complete until you’ve reacted to it. As if the world is waiting for your take.

It isn’t.

Marcus Aurelius ran an empire through plague and war, and still kept reminding himself: you always own the option of having no opinion. Things stand exactly how they are. They don’t demand your verdict. The demand is manufactured.

Every opinion is work. It has to be formed, defended, updated, performed. Carry a hundred of them and you wonder why you’re tired.

Where you can act, act. But most of what pulls at you today, you will never act on. You’re just donating your peace and effort to strangers.

Notice when it happens. Feel the pull to weigh in. Then decline. Don’t give in to the demand to have an opinion.

Watch how much of your energy comes back. Spend it in ways that benefit you, not other people.