TRUTH
I have been thinking a lot about truth. And people. For a long time.
It’s a complicated subject and I come at it from a number of angles. From being a human being for sure. From being an actor/director/creator of stories which is a wildly complicated subject.
And I come at it from someone who has always held as a core value the notion of truth, which as a person who did not always tell the truth.
Let me just get out of the way right off the bat here my variances from ‘the truth’. I have never told any grand lies. No real smoke and mirrors, or obstructions to some particular end. No, my biggest untruth of memory is possible a depressed drive one night where I stopped in a bar and tried to pull myself off as a French person. The lie was big enough to get me served alcohol underage, but I doubt I actually fooled anyone. Or maybe I did and that is why they served me when I pretended not to understand “May I see your ID”.
In any case, I find truth a fascinating subject. One that we do not discuss very often. Too provocative I’m guessing. But truth is as vital as air, food, water. It is a necessary component of society and without it leads directly to its breakdown.
We count on each other to tell the truth. Think about it. When you buy something at a store, you rely on the person ringing you up to tell you the truth about what it costs. You rely on people driving on the roads side by side with you to be as you assume - able to drive, understanding of the rules of the road, and capable of managing their vehicle. We rely on the truth of each other’s competency, of each other’s truth about it.
We assume when people speak to us, telling us about their son while in line at JCPenny who is at MIT and loves these Polo shirts. We assume when we date that the life story we are told is the truth. We assume when people apply for a job, their credentials are real, and the person they present us with is the one who will show up at the first day of work.
Where in life can we find a place where the truth fundamentally does not matter? Where in life can we find peace in the discovery of an untruth? Our relationships? How many marriages have broken up because of lies? How many friendships, familial relationships how many jobs lost because the truth was not strictly adhered to?
And yet. And yet.
How rich would we be were we to each be presented a dollar for every slight untruth we heard. “Oh all lawyers are crooks”. “Both parties are the same”. “All men cheat”. “Climate change is just a theory”. We humans have long been susceptible to drama and hyperbole. We love it, we eat it up - its where comedy and drama and storytelling come from after all. We entertain each other with exaggeration.
But it has always been a slippery slope. Ever has ignorance met exaggeration to a bad end. But we have relied on a separation of drama and reality - such a separation like that between church and state. Let’s not let the reality of life, the facts, get in the way of our more ethereal and spiritual nature. Let’s not let science and practicality dampen imagination. We need both.
But we need them to be separate and distinct. And these days the experience is more of blurred lines with some diving right into the middle of the squiggly center. A smorgasbord of truth and fiction all on the same tray for us to figure out which is healthful and which will give you indigestion.
Hail choice, of course. But lets have some more separation between truth and fiction with an agenda. Or we might all eventually find we are raising a spoon of strawberry only to be swallowing ice cream ketsup.
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