THE TRUTH, THE WAY

Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true.
Swami Vivekananda

Quite simply, what's true for you need not be true for me. At a deeper level, how many of us are true to ourselves? To our nature? Being true to others is barely an extension of this.

Kierkegaard believed there was an objective truth -- concerned with the facts of a person's being, and a subjective one -- concerned with a person's way of being.

But I'm not attempting, here, to get into a metaphysical discussion on absolute truth, or even reality or the perception of reality. That's a subject that requires in-depth study and analysis.

In our immediate environment, how much of what we see or hear (or are taught) is the truth, and how much a facade? An attempt to control, condition? I'll never forget this scene in Renoir's La Grande Illusion where there's a shot of a radio and a sound clip of a news report on the war, juxtaposed with a person holding a mask.
Joseph Goebbels, who said, "If the lie is big enough and told often enough, it will be believed," had all prints of the film destroyed. But that is what the truth does: it's raw, it's powerful, and it's dreadfully painful. And like all painful situations, it stirs change.

I can't say all of the media is a lie (and not just because I work for the industry), but there are enough half-truths and untruths there to set you thinking. For that matter, I don't quite know which industry is free from lying/masking the truth/changing it to suit its purpose.
History textbooks are now being challenged for having fed children with white lies for years. Scientists and researchers fudge data; politicians lie to voters; witnesses lie to judges; the cops lie about 'encounters'; the government lies to the people; people lie to their partners, and even in their resumes. There are, of course, the 'casual lies' we all tell to escape tough situations at work, at home or on the street.
And then there are the exaggerations: those great attention-seeking mechanisms used primarily for the purpose of entertainment.

At the other end of the spectrum, little children -- and adults who are children at heart -- can immediately spot a lie. Not hard to understand: they're pure, they're free of fear; they're more in touch with their "true selves".

But why, why, why does one lie?
Demons, fears and insecurities, in Mahatma Gandhi's eyes, are greatest challenges to truth. Lying is pathological -- there are esteem issues here. Often, lying's a habit, and unless there's enough will power, it's difficult to break out of the cycle. It's often difficult to face what is real.

But just as the truth is painful, lying hurts too, and that pain is long-term.
The world, my friend, is imperfect. And only The Truth is perfect.