A Series of Unpopular Opinions

 

I have a lot of (possibly) very unpopular opinions.

I think holding unpopular opinions may come as a privilege of old(er) age. How I developed these isn’t anything earth-shattering. I tried a lot of things that failed. I took some failures and flipped them and was happy with the results. In those cases, I had probably listened to someone else’s opinion, took their advice, and decided it wasn’t for me. Some are just personal preferences.

You might share some of these opinions, but you might strongly disagree. That’s okay. Differing opinions make (or used to make) the world go ‘round.

Not every wall needs something on it.

I think I was a “maximalist” before I knew it was a real thing. I had “stuff” on every wall in every house or apartment I ever lived in. If I didn’t have real art, I made stuff. Fabric stretched over old frames would even work in a pinch. Gallery walls made me happy and stuffed full gallery walls made me even happier. I picked up other people’s framed family pictures and used those, too. Occasionally, I would find some original artwork, and those had pride of place in my galleries. But mostly it was just cheap stuff I found.

None of that is bad. I was cheap and creative and it just all came out and went everywhere. But over time I found myself needing some quiet places to rest my eyes. The galleries started coming down. The walls started to sigh in relief. Or maybe it was just me sighing in relief. I found myself waiting to hang things back up. I kept the original art and sold or donated the commercial art. I’m still working through that. I lived with blank walls for a while. Slowly spaces seemed to whisper to me that this litho or that photograph or the other print would look good right here.

You might like things on all the walls. I used to. But now my opinion is that not every wall “needs” something hung on it.

Sometimes, the "store brand” really isn’t the same.

I learned this one from Bob. There was a moment when we were told that the house brands were exactly the same product as the name brands. And house brands were generally quite a lot less than the name brands. Being the frugal (cheap) shopper that I am, I went all in, happily swapping store-brand items for name brands. Better yet, I didn’t have to fuss with coupons to get the savings. For the most part, this was fine. Until.

Now, in the middle of this unpopular opinion will be an unpopular choice and that is that Bob and I, grown adult people, choose to use American singles on burgers and other sandwiches. Yep, you got it, the little squares wrapped in plastic. Judge quietly if you must. But the point is that one time, I brought home the store brand of American singles, and it didn’t go very well. I think Bob waited until we were most of the way through the package before he said anything, and when he did, it was along the lines of: “Next time, can you please buy Kraft Amerian singles?”

I’m not going to say I flew off the handle, but I think I made some noise about the product being “exactly the same.” Bob strongly disagreed, saying that he could tell the difference. Well, I don’t like admitting this much, but he was right. Kraft singles are very melty and tasty. The others weren’t.

There is a short list of other store brands that I stopped buying in favor of the name brands. Generally: granola bars, mac and cheese (YES the boxed kind!), and ranch dressing. You can decide on your own but this is my opinion. In some cases, the house doesn’t win.

Navy and black are good together.

As someone who studied fashion design (yes, “apparel technology” was a real major), I have watched the navy-and-black debate resurface over and over (and over). In the 80s, it was practically a battle line in fashion circles. Central to the pro-navy-and-black argument are two points: Parisian women and the US military rock this combo, and they do it with aplomb. We don’t need to fight about it. If you don’t like navy and black together, it’s fine. If you do, then own that shit.

You can have a favorite dog.

When Kenai and Riley were still alive I would get the whole family up in arms when I would say without hesitation that Riley was my favorite dog. “How can you say that!?” they would ask me.

It wasn’t that I didn’t love Kenai, I absolutely did. He was a beautiful, gentle, and funny soul. I didn’t give him less of anything. In many ways, he was a better dog than Riley. He was good with kids. He didn’t generally misbehave. He was not afraid of much. And he was a big lover. He never met anyone he didn’t want to love on. He was sweet.

But Riley was my favorite despite his flaws and faults. He had my heart. I know this is an unpopular opinion (that’s why it’s in this post), but that’s fine. Maybe more than just being of the opinion that you can have a favorite dog is being of the opinion that you can accept that you just have those feelings and not feel bad about them. (You can even say it out loud.)

Cheap rugs never hurt a thing.

Of course, if money were no object, I would have fine Persian rugs throughout my home. But money is most certainly an object for us. So where we need area rugs in our home, I have chosen to shop for and actually purchase rugs that are not expensive. And it’s perfectly fine.

When we bought the house we live in now, I needed a large area rug for under the dining table. For that moment in time, I wanted something cheerful, affordable, and practical, so I got an indoor-outdoor rug that did the trick. Several years later, I upgraded that rug to something a little nicer, but it was still far less than a lot of the rugs you see at popular online or brick-and-mortar retailers. Imagine the horror I would have felt had I spent three or four times the price when puppy Stein Eriksen repeatedly baptized it in pee during potty training. (I don’t love any rug being peed on at any price; thank God that episode in puppy rearing is over.)

My office was originally a bedroom, and it went through several transformations when we bought the place, but eventually, it returned to being an office. It has hard floors, so I wanted a large rug that made a kind of statement. And, I went dirt cheap. In this case, it really was more about the look of it than the quality, and you know what? That’s fine. I’m the only person who’s ever in here, so it’s not like it has to withstand a lot of traffic. And I’m the only person who’s ever in here, so it doesn’t have to please anyone but me.

Cheap rugs are fine. If you can afford more and you want that, great. If you can’t, don’t let the suckers get you down. Cheap rugs are fine.

It’s fine if you need to give up.

This might be the most unpopular of all. But I’m telling you, I believe that it’s okay to decide to throw in the towel when you need to.

We live in a culture that says to never give up. Never, ever, ever give up. And I am not at all opposed to giving it the old college try, but sometimes it just makes sense to stop.

A while ago, macrame was back, and I was loving it. It was bringing back all the great feels of the 70s. I'll have so much fun with this, I thought. I bought a huge reel of macrame cord and found some tutorials online, and I was all set. I managed to make two or three "perfectly okay" plant hangers. It wasn't hard, and they were quick to make, but I just didn't have a desire to improve my craft or take it to any other level. And in the end, I saw better quality, prettier macrame hangers for sale everywhere. So I gave up. Nothing bad happened; I didn’t disappoint anyone, and I managed to sell that partly used reel of cord in my garage sale for about two bucks.

There are some other tried-and-failed projects that I could name. They were all very similar. Some things just didn’t thrill me, even though I was capable. Some things I wanted very badly to do but just didn’t have the aptitude (watercolor painting), or the desire to develop the aptitude. There may have been a twinge of guilt when I gave up on these things. But I chalked them up to lingering memories of people in my past telling me that giving up wasn’t an option. But it was, it really was.

Those were easy. This one was hard.

The one regret I have from my entire cancer experience (well, besides having cancer) had to do with breast reconstruction. I had a mastectomy of my right breast, then chemo, then radiation. When I was finished with all that treatment, as soon as I could, I went to see a plastic surgeon about having breast reconstruction. In my mind, I was “too young” not to have it done, so I forged ahead. The first surgery was to insert a tissue expander, which did just what it sounds like, and yes, it was miserable. Then, I had two reconstruction surgeries. The second was an attempt to make it all more symmetrical. (If you are still reading, I feel like I should buy you a KitKat bar or something.)

After this was all done, and my surgeon basically said, “Tada,” you would think I would have been happy with the results. No. I was seriously disillusioned and just wished I had never gone through with any of it. More than that, I was never happy with what it looked and felt like. It was nothing like I expected.

I visited my plastic surgeon at least two more times, asking what my options were, including “just taking it out.” He told me this was also totally doable but explained the drawbacks. They were pretty significant.

So I gave up.

Some women may not understand why I didn’t keep pushing, and I get that. Why wouldn’t I keep pushing for something that looked and felt better? Why wouldn’t I go through with a reversal if that was what I wanted? There’s not an easy answer to that except to say it was just time to let it go. Spending more time, more money, and putting myself and Bob through more surgeries that might not solve anything did not seem like something I should keep pursuing. It was okay for me to just give up. And I’m fine.

A final unpopular opinion: being unfinished is all right.

I will bet some people will agree with me on this one, while others might push back. But I believe it’s totally all right to be a work in progress. Maybe that’s just a way for me to justify my less-than-perfect choices, mindset, or behavior. Probably! I don’t have the answers. I don’t have it all figured out. I mess up frequently and with ease. But my unfinished-ness turns me toward God, not away from him.

If there’s a common theme in these crazy opinions it might be that a little letting go can go a long way. Letting walls be blank, choosing things that really matter, letting go of what doesn’t work, and acknowledging my constant need for God—it’s all a kind of surrender.

What is your opinion?