Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Truth

Truth is in the mind of the speaker. My truth may not be your truth. And yours may not be mine. It mostly depends on our experience and cultural background.

When you ask another person to tell you the truth, it is likely that you will not be happy with their version. And yet, sometimes another person's version of the truth is something that we need to hear. As my friend Janet would say, its another opinion. Everyone has one.

The difficulty begins when we take another individual's truth as our own. Sometimes this happens because we are easily influenced. Sometimes it happens because the other person is charismatic. But the worst is when we take that truth as ours because that person is our friend. That's when truth and trust get mixed up and combined.

Trust is our dependence on the other person to tell us their version of the truth--whether we agree with it or not. But we must never swap out that trust in place of the truth. Our truth is what we know in our heart. If we discard our truth for another, then we betray ourselves.

For the last several weeks, I have been seeking the truth on many levels. Personal, professional, and even in the outer world. It is a difficult commodity to locate, isn't it? Everywhere we turn there is a new truth for us to face.

In the public arena sound-bites are posed as the truth. And yet... are they? I wonder how many people track down the story behind the sound-bites? A few years ago, there was a movie about a politician who needed a war... (I confess that I've forgotten exactly why)...anyway, he hired a famous director to produce his war. The entire war was fake, but the press was manipulated in such a way that the public truly believed that we were at war. After all, they had pictures, didn't they?

The economy is doing the tango. Everyone has a plan. Everyone has a truth to explain why we're all dancing. Who's truth is the right one? When will we stop dancing long enough to find out?

Oh yeah... if you thought this blog was about you--it's not! And that's the truth!

anny

5 comments:

  1. Truth is whatever you want it to be

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  2. I'm finding this particularly true with politics right now. Seems like I keep hearing all this stuff about both candidates and pieces might be true, but rarely the whole enchilada.

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  3. What IS true is a friends opinion is just an opinion but you can at least know it's well-meant. When we get a review, for example, we don't KNOW that person, they aren't FRIENDS and the opinion is something to consider but not to take to heart.In the end, you have to trust your own truth and do what your heart/mind tells you.

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  4. What you say is so true. LOL.

    It's just like history. History is usually told by the winners and is in their viewpoint, or in other words, their view of the truth.

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