"Believe nothing until you've tried it yourself."
I love having conversations with open-minded people, even those who lack the breadth of travel and experience I have had - it doesn't matter because they're so open minded they understand even things they've never experienced. I admire these people because I'm their opposite - I learn through empirical testing. That being said, I really do hate talking with close-minded people. Interestingly enough, I've met very few who are as well traveled or well experienced as I am. Travel and experience seem to be one of the pivotal turning points between the two. Its hard to be close-minded if you're well traveled. Unless you are a creature of politics or religion.
Its complicated, really; two of the three things you're not supposed to talk about is the basis for the close-minded type - what they want/expect to be known for. By their own choice it identifies them. And even if you remove the third taboo subject - money - these days you can add sex because of its many and varied combinations. What a clusterfuck!
I've been cataloging this for awhile now and I'm pretty sure that the majority of extremely brilliant open-minded thinkers I've met have neither strong political nor religious underpinnings. They simply transcend it - that which would hold a lesser person back from experiencing the world with eyes of wonder and curiosity. Sadly, the opposite is also very, uncomfortably true: If you are overly political or overly religious, I've found you prohibitively close-minded. Hysterically enough, the latter would also argue the point with me. As if I would care what they had to say to me on the matter.
And yet there are those who have traveled much more extensively than I have. Those who are way smarter than I am. Those who are older, and those who have done so much more and different things. It all seems to boil down to religion and politics. If you're dyed-in-the-wool, born-again, and/or hold a single-party political viewpoint, you can't even understand what I'm talking about - your limitations limit you.
I was you.
In every way possible.
With one divergence.
I questioned everything.
And that has made all the difference.
"Whether we are feeling happy or unhappy at any given moment often has
very little to do with our absolute conditions but, rather, it is a
function of how we perceive our situation, how satisfied we are with
what we have." ~ Dalai Lama