One thing that has always fascinated me about people is that every single one of us is operating with a completely different set of information.

Think about that for a second.

There are over eight billion people on this planet, and not one of them has lived your life. Nobody has met the exact same people you have, worked the same jobs, watched the same YouTube videos at two in the morning, read the same random articles, had the same conversations, or experienced the same failures and successes. Every single one of us has our own little library in our heads, and every library is different.

So why are we constantly surprised when people think differently?

The other day I was in a conversation where the topic happened to be aliens. Honestly, the topic itself doesn’t even matter. It could have been politics, sports, cars, religion, or pineapple on pizza. The principle is exactly the same.

Someone simply said they didn’t really believe in aliens.

Another person asked why.

They didn’t really have an answer.

Then came the follow-up questions. Well, how can you believe that? What information do you have? What’s your reasoning?

Now, I completely understand asking those questions. I ask people “why” all the time. I love hearing how people think. Half the time I walk away having learned something I never considered before.

But here’s where I think we go wrong.

Somewhere along the line, we started acting as though every opinion needs to come with a bibliography.

Sometimes people just… think something.

Sometimes they don’t know why.

Sometimes they haven’t looked into it.

And sometimes they simply don’t care enough about the topic to spend their free time researching it.

And that’s okay.

People only have so many hours in a day. Every hour you spend learning about one subject is an hour you didn’t spend learning about another.

I’ve spent countless hours reading about construction, housing policy, infrastructure, inspections, budgeting, and all kinds of random systems that most people would probably find incredibly boring. Meanwhile, someone else spent those same hours learning music theory, astronomy, baking, psychology, or ancient history.

Who’s right?

Neither of us.

We just invested our time differently.

So if someone tells me they aren’t interested in aliens, why would I expect them to have watched every documentary, read every article, followed every government hearing, or listened to every podcast discussing the topic?

Of course they haven’t.

Just like I couldn’t explain the finer points of professional ballet or the history of eighteenth-century French literature. Not because those subjects aren’t valuable, but because my attention went elsewhere.

That’s the part people forget.

We don’t all possess the same information.

We’re all making decisions based on our own little pile of knowledge, experiences, conversations, and assumptions. Some piles are bigger in certain areas than others. Mine certainly is. Yours probably is too.

This also means something important.

Just because someone can’t articulate their reasoning on the spot doesn’t necessarily mean they’re wrong. It might simply mean they’ve never cared enough to organize their thoughts into a neat little presentation.

I’ve also noticed something else that bothers me.

When someone says they haven’t really thought about something, people immediately feel the need to educate them. They start pulling out facts, statistics, videos, and articles as if it’s their responsibility to convert the other person.

Why?

If they’re interested, they’ll ask.

If they become curious, they’ll go down the rabbit hole just like the rest of us did.

And the funny thing is, they’ll probably discover information we never even found ourselves.

Curiosity can’t be forced.

It has to be chosen.

I think we’d all get along a whole lot better if we stopped treating every disagreement like an emergency that must be solved immediately.

You don’t have to convince everyone.

You don’t have to win every conversation.

You don’t have to demand that someone explain every belief they’ve ever held.

Sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is simply acknowledge that another person has lived a different life than you have, accumulated different information than you have, and arrived at a different conclusion than you have.

Maybe they’re right.

Maybe they’re wrong.

Maybe they simply haven’t spent much time thinking about it.

And maybe that’s perfectly okay.

For all our talk about tolerance and understanding, we’ve forgotten one incredibly powerful phrase. It doesn’t mean you agree. It doesn’t mean you’ve changed your mind. It simply means you’re willing to let another human being exist without putting them on trial.

“Fair enough.”