Borrowed Glasses Don't Fit

One of the quietest ways people give up their agency is by inheriting opinions.

Not because those opinions are malicious. Most of them aren’t. They’re usually well-intentioned shortcuts: “This team isn’t great.” “That company is past its prime.” “This path won’t lead anywhere.” They come pre-packaged, socially validated, and convenient. And that’s precisely the problem.

When you inherit a worldview, you also inherit its emotional consequences—without earning the understanding that should come with them.

A concrete example: joining “that” team

Imagine joining a new team and, before you’ve written a single line of code, you hear the whispers:

• “Not a high-impact team.”
• “Career dead end.”
• “No serious engineers there.”

If you inherit this narrative, something subtle but damaging happens. You stop looking. You stop testing. You stop noticing.

Every task becomes evidence for the story. Every friction confirms it. You become sad not because the situation is objectively bad, but because you accepted someone else’s conclusion as final.

Now contrast that with forming your own view.

You ask different questions:

• What problems does this team actually solve?
• What constraints are real vs historical accidents?
• What can I learn here that I couldn’t elsewhere?
• Who thrives here, and why?

Maybe you still conclude the team isn’t right for you. Fine. That’s a earned conclusion. It comes with clarity instead of bitterness.

But often, something else happens. You discover depth others missed. You find leverage. You grow in ways the popular narrative never measured.

The danger of second-hand certainty

Certainty feels good. Especially borrowed certainty. It saves thinking time and spares you from ambiguity. But borrowed certainty is brittle. It collapses the moment reality doesn’t match the story.

As engineers, we instinctively distrust systems we didn’t design or inspect. Yet in life, we do the opposite. We run critical decisions on unverified assumptions written by someone else, often years ago, under conditions that no longer exist.

This is lazy thinking disguised as wisdom.

Flawed opinions are better than borrowed ones

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: your independently formed opinions will often be wrong.

Good. That’s not a bug. That’s the cost of thinking.

A flawed opinion you arrived at through honest evaluation is infinitely more valuable than a correct opinion you inherited passively. The former sharpens judgment. The latter atrophies it.

People who grow are not the ones who avoid mistakes; they are the ones who make their own mistakes.

World views compound quietly

Your worldview is not a single belief. It’s a compounding system.

If you habitually inherit opinions:

• You outsource judgment.
• You narrow your curiosity.
• You slowly lose confidence in your own perception.

If you habitually form your own:

• You become harder to manipulate.
• You tolerate ambiguity better.
• You see optionality where others see fate.

A simple rule I try to follow

Before accepting any strong opinion, especially a pessimistic one, I ask:

“Have I personally observed enough evidence to justify feeling this way?”

If the answer is no, the opinion goes into a holding pattern. Not rejected. Not accepted. Just suspended.

Most things deserve that suspension.

The quiet rebellion

Forming your own worldview isn’t loud. It doesn’t require contrarianism or rebellion for its own sake. It’s a quiet, disciplined refusal to let someone else think on your behalf.

In a world overflowing with takes, this is rare. And valuable.

See clearly. Decide slowly. Own your conclusions—even the flawed ones.

They’re yours. And that makes all the difference.