You have your camp. Your sports team. Your religious stance. Your political stance. Your opinion on many things. You state these opinions out loud because they are your opinions. During conversations with friends, you make your stance clear. Like everyone else.
Nothing wrong with that. They reflect where you are today. Based on what you know and have experienced so far.
But what happens for a lot of you is that you stick with these convictions blindly. Because you made them earlier. You said it out loud. A part of this is how your brain works. It has learned a pattern and does not need to keep wondering what the appropriate response is. A red light means stop. A green light means go. And so on.
But your brain is capable of learning more information. You might meet different people with vastly different experiences than you. You will learn many other perspectives. Which should cause you to revisit your various camps and opinions. Not because you were wrong. But because you have a lot more information than before.
It doesn't change or reduce the validity of what you believed earlier. What's sillier? To believe/do something you no longer agree with because it is embarrassing/uncomfortable to have a new stance? Or to have a new stance that reflects who you are today?
For example, I grew up in a vegetarian household in Madras.
Going to visit my dad's village opened up my world quite a bit.
Having friends whose upbringing was quite different from mine, eating at their homes and spending time with them opened it up even more.
Going to grad school opened it up even more.
And all this kept adding to my context. Continuing to parrot what I had committed to when I was younger doesn't make any sense.
That was what I believed when I knew what I did. This is what I believe today based on what I now know, as part of the journey.
Changing your mind happens all the time. And it is a good thing. You've been taught to stay consistent. You've been asked questions when you contradict your earlier opinions. To avoid complications, you feel it is simpler to stay with what you started off with.
It depends.
Often, that might be true. In some other cases, it will not be true.
With new information, you should question earlier stances. Post that, if you still choose to stay with the same opinion - that's great. You've evaluated the information, rather than ignoring it.
Changing your mind is a good thing.
You are not the same person you were 10 years ago. Heck, 10 days ago.
Change is the only constant.
Be true to yourself. Follow your intuition. Question everything. Including your stances.