A Special Skill You Have

Long ago I was very keen in politics, i used to watch and analyze debates and I even signed up for a debate club back at my high school, an activity which I thoroughly enjoyed but one that also helped me speak to a large audience. However I also caught something from this experience that changed my way of understanding debates, media and life itself, and that is the ability to understand all and every point of view be it as strange or unfounded as any other person could find it.

Back in the day when I first started debating I had very clear opinions on topics such as animalism or enviromentalism, unable to understand any ideas from the opposed team (why bullfighting isn't wrong, why we shouldn't apply enviroment friendly politics, etc.) making my team more of an echo chamber than an actual group of people with genuine ideas to put on the table. With that said on most of the debates we had my team was the less stricking as we used to think our ideas to be the correct ones therefore making us the winners of the debate, so seeing a group with totally opposed ideas rise as the victor really had me wondering a lot of things: why haven't we won? How is that a team which defends bullfighting is the successful one? And so on and so forth.

The conclusion I got from this was that every point of view could have arguments for it, although some may find them illogic or unbased, but finding them irrelevant doesn't make them unreal, every point of view can be understandable and defended, but understanding one concept doesn't mean I commune with it, I still have my own ideas, but I'm more open to new ones to which i had closed the door years ago.

To wrap things up, what I got from the debate club was the ability to understand many points of view, as well as a great memories from those days; I wouldn't trade it for anything and it has helped me understand different points of view quite better as well as a valuable lesson: "Never close a door to new ideas."

01/10/2019 - 13:23/13:54