You don’t have to voice your opinion.
About who your sibling marries. About who gets to be the leader. About where we go from here. About what’s on the menu. About how someone runs a program. About the quality of the performance. About the font in the document. About the way the teacher teaches. About the songs sung in church. About the color of the carpet.
It is possible to form no opinion on this matter and not be troubled in one’s mind; for things themselves are not of such a nature that they can create judgements within us.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Often, our opinions cause us more trouble than they’re worth. Not because they’re wrong. Not because they’re right and the wrong people are angry. But because opinions take on a power all their own.
Once I entertain an opinion in my own heart and mind, I give it a level of influence over my inner self. Once I express an opinion aloud, I give it a level of influence from the outside. Once voiced, I am bound to uphold it, and thus I relinquish a degree of my external freedom and inner peace.
At the moment an opinion begins to form, I have a choice: Will I hold the power, or will this opinion hold the power? Who will hold who?
You can hold an opinion about anything, but that does not mean that you should. Wisdom is the art of discerning whether or not an opinion is worth the trouble it may bring.
As Marcus Aurelius also says,
If you suffer distress because of some external cause, it is not the thing itself that troubles you but your judgement about it, and it is within your power to cancel that judgement at any moment.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
It is possible to hold no opinion. It is possible to cancel it before the trouble and distress come calling.
(See Numbers 12:1-9).