Opinion. Everyone’s got one. It’s the currency of human interaction, flowing freely from every mouth, shaping and misshaping our perceptions of the world. From the high and mighty to the lowly minion, from the well-informed to the woefully ignorant, opinions are churned out with reckless abandon, a ceaseless tide of perspectives crashing against the shores of reality.
In the span of a single morning, the old man had already unleashed a torrent of opinions in his backyard, his pronouncements echoing through the quiet suburban landscape. Even the weather wasn’t safe from his pronouncements to his Mrs as she looked up from the uneven stakes that she had tried for days to train her tomato plants to cling on to with their tendrils like desperate arthritic fingers.
“It is not going to rain today,” he enunciated deliberately and slowly through his crooked teeth, as if words spoken with proper diction somehow bestowed infallibility upon his opinions.
His wife, however, was unconvinced. “You’re just wasting water,” she retorted, her voice laced with the exasperation of a woman who had heard it all before. “You’re just wasting your time. It’s gonna rain soon!” she opined in vain.
The old man didn’t care to scan the sky again for dark clouds as he kept aiming his hose at their banana plant, his gaze fixed on the banana plant he was watering. “It needs all the water it can get,” he muttered, his voice barely audible above the loud pissing from the hose. He had always believed that even trees possessed a certain discernment, a silent judgment of their surroundings. Trees discriminate. The two banana plants were discards (he nastily presumed) from their back neighbour, an old, shrivelled and bony Sri Lankan woman with eyes so milky he was surprised she could see them from her garden.
A year ago, she gave them the two plants, one almost withered and yellow, the other straight and green but thin. He planted the weak one in his neighbour’s garden – the good neighbour on the eastern side. The neighbour on the western side, they didn’t care much for – grouches, he called them, a long-standing opinion cemented by his wife’s endless litany of complaints. He had heard her grievances a thousand times, his usual response a silent nod or a noncommittal grunt.
The banana plant he was watering just before the rains swept through their hillside suburb was not much taller and not much thicker. It remained stunted and unimpressive, one of its leaves, once a promising burst of green, now wilted and drooping like the hunched back of its original owner, the brown-skinned woman with the wispy white hair. Meanwhile, the sickly yellow plant in the eastern neighbour’s yard had flourished, its leaves unfurling in a majestic display of verdant grandeur.
“Even trees have eyes for rich people,” the old man declared to his Mrs, his voice carrying a note of disdain. The neighbours were out shopping, their ears spared from his haughty pronouncement.
“Ssssstrewth! They aren’t treeeesss,” she said. “They are plantssss!” she said with glee packed with subtle sharpness in her voice to show she had another win over him. Her sibilant reply did not escape him, warning him to simply agree with her.
“It’s just our bad luck that you planted it in the wrong spot,” she offered her opinion unsolicited but nonetheless delivered with the air of undeniable truth, the softness in her voice measured, not to annoy him too much.
“Sure, it’s the wrong spot. We can see that now, but no one said anything when I was planting it,” he countered, his flawed logic digging him deeper into a hole of his own making.
“I wasn’t here, remember?!” she shouted from the chicken run.
Noticing that the chooks were scattering away from her, their feathers ruffled in alarm, he said to her to calm down.
“You’re scaring them away!” he yelled back. Not the least concern for them, he merely used them for scoring points.
“They are just fighting for the worms I just threw to them!” she retorted louder.
He shook his head, muttering to himself, “She’s forever correcting me, the know-it-all.” But then, a flicker of self-consolation: “Never mind, even a broken clock is right twice a day.” And so, the tide of opinions continued to ebb and flow, shaping and reshaping their little corner of the world.
Smelling the distinct scent of petrichor in the air, a harbinger of impending rain, he hastily turned off the garden tap and began winding up the inexpensive Gardena hose he’d purchased from Bunnings. “Damn,” he muttered to himself, “She’s going to be right again.”
Observing his neighbours returning home, their arms laden with shopping bags, he stood on his tiptoes to get a better look. “Need any help?” he called out in his most amiable tone. Without waiting for a response, he swiftly nipped across their backyard. His motive was clear – to help his neighbours and, perhaps more importantly, to deny his wife the satisfaction of gloating about winning their ongoing debate about the weather.
“Here, let me help,” he offered, taking some of the bags from James, his next-door neighbour. James, two years his junior, had retired early. The more astute of the two, James had also achieved greater success, not just financially, but also in terms of respect and admiration from others. Despite this, the older man never displayed any inclination to genuflect to his prosperous neighbour or seek his guidance. His Mrs, much to her dismay, held a different view and often reproached her husband for not heeding James’s advice on financial matters.
“He’s been retired for over ten years!” the old man would retort, defending his stance. James had cautioned him against putting all his eggs in one basket – a simple yet universally true piece of advice. Yet, the old man, revealing his stubborn and foolish nature, chose to disagree with his neighbour. He was dismissive of those around him, never considering the possibility that they might be right and he might be wrong.
“It’s like in poker,” he’d often declare, “You go all in when you hold the best cards,” his voice brimming with unwavering confidence.
“A confidence that may be misplaced, based on wrong opinions rather than true knowledge,” his Mrs would plead in vain.
“A fool and his money are soon parted,” she’d caution him, exasperated by the stubborn old man she shared her life with.
Throw out your conceited opinions, for it is impossible for a person to begin to learn what he thinks he already knows.
Epictectus, Discourses, 2.17.1
Urghhlings 