Open vs Conservative Minded

PENAT giler.. Hari-hari dalam kehidupan pelajar memang memenatkan. Dengan tugasan yang melambak, kuiz, ujian yang entah bile-bile je boleh muncul.  Haish.. Kind of headache sometime.

Okay. Tajuk hari ni bukan pasal letih atau penatnye kehidupan pelajar tapi Open Minded  vs Conservative Minded. Any idea what is open and conservative minded?

Alright. Before anything, let us go through the definition of open-minded and conservative. Open-minded mean unprejudiced, unbiased, flexible or tolerant and conservative minded is conventional, conformist, unadventurous and.., old school. Lol.

I believe that people in this world were divided into two types. The first type is the open-minded and the second one is conservative minded.  Well, three types actually. Golongan manusia dalam kelompok ketiga, manusia yang ditengah-tengah antara open-minded dan conservative minded. Erti kata lain, masih tak tetap pendirian, umpama lalang ditiup kekiri dia kekiri, ditiup kekanan dia kekanan. Won’t say much about the third type.

First, open-minded people as I say in the definition, they are more tolerant with others. For an  example, let say that my friend(I name him here as A) and I had a conversation and I accidentally(?) expressed something about sensitive things that might make any other people mad but him as an open-minded person won’t get emotional easily but instead of thathe’s neutral. What I meant here is he’s wise enough to know that sometime people does make mistake whether they notice it or not or.., hmm.. certain people really do behave like one.

Open-minded person easily accept any opinion or even though that they disagree with an opinion, they won’t act harsh as most people do, in my observation. As Ms Teo said in her class, “open-minded people ni contohnye macam kite cakap cadangan kepada seseorang itu tetapi orang tu tak setuju. Orang yang open-minded akan biarkan je selagi cadangan tu tak membawa masalah kepada sesiape. You may do it with your way but I’m still with mine.” I have nothing to say accept to agree with Ms Teo. And as far as I can see, Ms Teo is another open-minded person, unprejudiced unlike many other.

Opposite to open-minded, conservative minded type of people is hardly to accept new changes in their live. Sorry to say but most of my own race are like that. Not to underestimate my own race but that’s the fact. Not only mine but also all races are the same. Like in my country, even converting words such as “assalamualaikum” into English word, could be an issue among the student. The conservative would say such thing as Muslims that used to convert the ‘salam’ is like following Christian. Is that kind of thing can be an issue? Not only that, there’s few conservative Malay teenagers in Facebook last year making an issue of the Muslims that do breakfast with the non-Muslims during Ramadan. To be honest, this happened to my friends. Sometimes, it happen to beat a dead horse. What a huge headache.

But hey, don’t get confused. Open-minded and free-thinker is two different thing. Open-minded ni pemikiran terbuka dan free-thinker pulak berfikiran bebas. Terbuka dengan bebas adalah dua perkare yang jauh giler perbezaannye. Pemikiran terbuka masih mempunyai batasan, masih berfikir tentang logik agama berbanding dengan pemikiran bebas yang langsung takde erti batasan. Bebas untuk fikir, percaya atau bercakap tentang ape-ape walaupun bertentangan dengan hokum alam hatta agama.

But the thing is, being conservative also has it own goodness like preventing certain traditional custom from vanished. Whatever it is, open-minded and conservative is something that need to make our world balance. It’s like the concept of yin and yang, one can’t stand alone by itself. Too conservative is not good and too open also will only change you from open-minded to free-thinker. Pada Fir, pembaca semua pun mesti cukup matang untuk fikir bile kite patut terima perubahan dengan pertimbangan yang waras tapi bukan untuk kepentingan sendiri, not 100% at least.