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“There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself… if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.”

– Howard Thurman

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Random question: are you into pottery?

I follow a few ceramicists on TikTok and YouTube and I find it to be such a mesmerizing, intentional art form. If you’re not fully familiar (correct me if I’m wrong, pottery-lovers of the world!), the artist take a mound of clay, places it in on the surface of a spinning wheel, and uses water to mold it to their liking–a process known as throwing. Once pleased with the form, the artist trims, waxes, and glazes their creation until it’s ready to be fired and finished. 

I truly didn’t think this topic had ANYTHING to do with this newsletter series… until I started reflecting on the process of forming our own opinions and beliefs. 

In last week’s issue, we talked about the opinion avalanche and opened the door to a conversation about fear-based activism that can be harsh and unrelenting. If gone unchecked, it can morph into a form of legalism where we abandon grace and nuance for perfectionism and performance.

So what do we do when opinions are coming at us from every side and clouding our ability to clearly define what we believe about a certain issue? And what does any of this have to do with pottery???

I’d say that it’s a matter of being informed vs. being formed.

THE THROWING 

Our perspective about an issue or cause is like a mound of clay on a wheel. It’s a product of its environment, and we are the potters, consistently molding it with time and experience. Our learnings can be compared to water: we use it as a tool in our molding. New information can help to loosen up our preconceived notions or long-held beliefs and make way for change. 

 Using the perspective or opinion of someone else as a tool in our “throwing’ can also work in this way, guiding how we mold our own beliefs. But in the heat of a cultural or political moment–when we feel the pressure to have fully formed, ready-to-share thoughts at a moment’s notice–it’s tempting to grab a chunk of someone else’s opinion and make it our own. Instead of using it like water, we’re using it like clay, taking pieces of their formed thought-process and haphazardly combining it with ours.

It’s a recipe for a crumbly, unstable foundation. 

More often than not, the two mounds of clay are not the same. They come from different environments and cannot be easily combined because there are so many factors to consider. In the end, instead of having a personal perspective informed by what we’ve learned, we have a hodgepodge of everyone else’s beliefs formed into our own. It’s not clear, it’s not personal, and it’s not built to last.

When we don’t have ownership of our opinions, we’re susceptible to blindly following the lead of those we’re pulling from, making it hard to test what we’re being told and leading us further down the road toward a legalistic approach to our activism–simply mirroring what we see out of fear of getting it wrong.

Eventually, we all are formed by something. In my experience, it’s better if that “something” isn’t solely a collection of other people’s hot takes or perspectives, but a steady stream of verifiable resources, historical context, the wisdom of our elders, and the lived experiences of the most vulnerable.