BANANACUE
REPUBLIC
Vol I, No. 16
Dec 22, 2004
attitudes by H. A. de Veyra
Liberating
Truth
Truth has many faces, it has been said. Truth is subjective. Truth is
subject to many interpretations depending on which angle it’s being
scrutinized. Like Einstein’s e=mc2, truth has no constancy and no
definiteness. Truth becomes a lie when viewed from different places and
different times. Depending on what background you’re from, what economic
status you have, what experiences you’ve gone through in your lifetime,
truth will always be distorted once it passes through your mind. We know
this, that truth is always subject to the beholder’s interpretation of an
event.
I’ve always been searching for truth, and I tell you it’s a frustrating quest. If I stand at point A, point B becomes a lie. If I stand at point B, point A becomes the lie. And imagine that there are 24 letters in the alphabet, you see now how many truths there can be? When point A is the truth, then B to Z becomes the 'lie', ad infinitum.
Remember the Jainist parable about the five blind men and the elephant? And how each blind man defined the elephant? One said an elephant is a hairy trunk. Another said, an elephant is a long tail. Another said, an elephant is a tusk. And so on... Each one of them said what part of an elephant is, but not what an elephant really is. Each of them told a truth, but not the ‘whole’ truth.
All of us, all of us in this earth view the world like that. Not one of us holds the absolute truth. We interpret all events from our eyes (based on our experiences, our economic and educational background, our standing in society, the generation we’re from, etc). Because of this, it’s so easy to distort truth, and because of this, it’s easy to intentionally manipulate truth. Take CNN for example, it doesn’t say outright that terrorists and Iraqis are bad people. But what it doesn’t say with words, it says through the images it chooses to show along with the news. It’s so easy to do that. Remember a time you wanted someone to take your side, and which parts of the truth you only told, discarding the rest of the truths that didn’t support your ‘truth’. All of us do that, and not only CNN, not only the news stations, all of us.
So why am I going on about truth being a lie? Well because I found out that we’re viewing truth from the wrong perspective. We’re thinking back to our schooldays when there were only two correct answers to the test question: true or false. We’re thinking that one who is not right, must be wrong. And one who’s not wrong, must be right. We do know that the world is not all black and white, that there are gray areas in between, but we’re still dichotomizing the world into either-or’s. Because we do this, it follows that all our actions and decisions are based on truth or false. Yes or no. Right or wrong. And regret and guilty conscience in between.
Recently I found out that the only way we can function as true human beings is to be true to ourselves. True to what we feel. True to what we think is right. True to what we are, our principles, our beliefs, our feelings. And if we think it’s necessary to say a ‘truth’, we should, even if we think it’s going to hurt another. I always believed that the feelings we feel (especially hurt and pain) are our responsibility, and not the other’s inflicting it on us. Our emotions and our thoughts are ours, and it is ours to deal with and we should never give the responsibility of making ourselves feel good, to the other. That’s why we should in turn, be truthful to ourselves, be the way we are and let the other person handle the situation from his own end. Of course, there is some truth in the saying: "don’t say it if it’s not nice or helpful" but that only shows how right I am. Truth has many faces, and you can never know from which angle you should operate. Somehow you can only choose the best possible option. Your own truth.
The best ‘truth’ there is, is the one that’s felt in the heart. In relationships, there is this certain liberating kind of truth: admitting what you feel. Admitting your emotions. If you love someone, for god’s sake say it. Why hide it? Why block it? Why deny the feeling? Is it because you might come out a fool because your love wasn’t reciprocated? Or because your ego might be hurt because you made yourself vulnerable to the other, and therefore, not in control? So what? That’s the least of your problems. The real loss (of control) comes when you don’t anymore feel. And you could lose that if you keep on denying your feelings all the time.
A friend of mine told me that the first month of a relationship (or dating) usually starts with ‘games’. Being in control, stroking one’s ego, getting to know each other and stroking the other’s ego, trying to be more in control, not exposing too much of yourself because it’s too early in the ‘game’. But she did the most amazing thing, she laid her cards on the table early on in the ‘game’, and announced what she wanted to happen in the relationship, what she expected from it, and what her plans were. She wasn’t afraid that because of what she did, she could lose this potential partner. The good thing about that is you learn early on in the game whether this is the right person to pursue or not. But better still, you can say no when the other doesn’t have the qualities you’re looking for in a partner. Who was it who said that you should know what you want and what you expect in a relationship before entering one?
But going back to truth. When you say your ‘truth’, you learn how liberating it is. Not anymore do you have to decide what to do or not to do, whether to be this or that, to go or not to go, to say yes or to say no... Somehow, when you accept your own truth, and especially when you say it to the other, you become free. I guess, it’s a matter of choosing what emotions you want to feel, what kind of person you want to be, accepting your true feelings and being them... that’s what matters. If you liked and felt ‘true’ being loving and affectionate (emotions triggered by your lover), why not maintain it even when you already lost the lover? After all, the feeling was yours, not your lover’s.
Only through this, when you don’t anymore expect your true feelings to be reciprocated, can you say you’re being true to yourself. Instead of loving, you’re now being loving. And I think, that’s the best way of looking at truth.
Truth liberates, even if it’s not the whole truth.
Posted 12/22/04. Send your comment to bananacue_republic@yahoo.com
"The
best ‘truth’ there is, is the one that’s felt in the heart. In
relationships, there is this certain liberating kind of truth: admitting
what you feel. Admitting your emotions. If you love someone, for god’s
sake say it."