Being a part of The Stampede, I often ponder my opinion of things. I’ve gotten into the habit of trying to formulate an opinion of different concepts or products as soon as they pop up into my mind. It makes writing out those opinions much easier.

At the start of this habit, I would sometimes think negatively of a product only to change my mind within moments. I would rationalize it in my head, look at it from another point of view, or simply not find it as annoying or bad upon a second thought.

Because of this, a person’s lack of action, a lazy cash grab of a product, or a simple mistake on someone’s behalf can turn from annoying and unwarranted to understandable and even commendable.

In fact, Albert Einstein has a perfect quote for this: “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

When you’re at a restaurant, it may seem that you are not being serviced like you want. Your server is too slow, they aren’t there when you need them, and they always seem to be passing up your table, but then you consider all that they’re doing: they’ve gotten your drinks and taken your order, they’ve ensured that your table has been cleared off, cleaned, and swept under, and they’re doing this for every table and every group of people put under their charge, which may be as much as six different tables at once. When you put all of that into mind, it doesn’t seem unwarranted when your server passes you up to deliver a heavy tray of food to another table.

When I go into the theaters to watch a movie, I sometimes (very rarely) go into it expecting, sometimes wanting, to hate a movie. I was once dragged into a showing of The Emoji Movie by my little sister one night. Previously, I had sworn off watching the movie on the merit that its concept was stupid and that it was just a hopeless cash grab for the parents of young children to throw their money at.

When my sister and I got out, I didn’t mind it. I didn’t think the movie was mentally stimulating by any means, but it also wasn’t mentally exhausting either. There were moments where I would roll my eyes at how a character would over react to something minor and in turn ruin everything for everyone else, but there were also times in which I would genuinely find myself smiling at how a scene was presented.

I don’t think I’ll be giving it another watch anytime soon, but I wouldn’t insist others turn it off if it happened to come on TV. On that day in the theatre, I was judging a movie based on its concept not its actual content, and considering how the movie is made for kids, it wasn’t half bad.

Of course there are things that people do or movies that are inexcusable despite a second view, but I feel that life can have a tint to it if you try to see the positives or the other side of the things that may annoy you.