During a long car ride in the middle of the night back during college, the music I was listening to slowly segued into a talk radio show. The host was a guy that I had never heard of named Bill O'Reilly. As the program began, he proceeded to go right into discussing his thoughts on gay marriage and why he felt it shouldn't be legalized.

I don't remember the exact details, since this was eight years ago, but I remember taking the details of his opinion and "wearing them" for a little while. For a very short period of time, I examined the world through Bill's eyes to see if his opinion resonated with my own perception of the world.

I have my own opinion about the whole gay marriage issue, and ultimately, the thoughts I heard expressed by Bill O'Reilly that night did nothing to influence that opinion one way or another. That doesn't mean I wasted my time in seriously considering them. It's not about determining whether or not new information is right or wrong based on what you know or believe, but about using the new information to reconsider your own knowledge or beliefs.

I think of political opinions as articles of clothing: you should try them on, walk around in them for a while to see how they fit you, and then shed them if you don't like them. Or, if they suit you, wear them for a little while. And like actual clothing, I think that opinions (especially political ones) need to be "refreshed" from time to time. If you wear the same articles of clothing at length for a long time, without at least taking them off and washing them occasionally, they're going to start to reek.