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.