My World of Facts

My World of Facts

I try to live in a fact based world. Whenever someone tries to converse with me about something

that isn’t based on facts, I become uneasy and nervous. I have always had difficulty in talking about

emotions and other undefined things: people that are “cool”, things that are “spiritual”, or the kind of

feeling one gets when around their partner. These types of social constructs and subjective feelings are

very hard for me to understand. It makes me feel left out in many conversations, like a raven among

swan. I feel more comfortable talking about facts, about things that have a tangible relationship with

reality. Facts about science, animals, and people would preoccupy my thoughts to the point where I didn’t

care about how people felt, or how I felt. This had drawn a wedge between me and my peers to where I

couldn’t relate to them, and they couldn’t relate to me.

I love reading about new ideas and technologies that have practical or theoretical implications that

affect peoples lives or increase our knowledge. Perhaps this is because I find it so difficult to talk about

things in a personal way; perhaps it is why. Even writing this essay is difficult for me, as it forces me to

talk about things from my own subjective point of view. A couple of years ago I couldn’t write an essay

like this at all. I have for the most part overcome this. I am a little bit more social; and a little bit more

understanding than I used to be.

Though today I am more able to talk about my personal feelings, I still feel more comfortable

with facts; because while subjective feelings cannot be measured, predicted, or agreed upon, facts are

absolute, objective, and change with new understanding, regardless of our feelings. I believe that in order

for us to make the world better by any metric, we must understand the difference between fact and our

own judgment. We must be willing to understand things that make us feel uncomfortable. We must be

willing to change ourselves for the better.