My Truth
This is an essay that I wrote in October 2009, and I think it was for a class assignment. I had forgotten about it until I was looking for meaning in my Google Docs. I think there's some pretty neat stuff in it, despite the embarrassing. I miss when I was forced to write essays about my feelings for class. I do this thing where I talk about "truth" but then I talk about "my truth," which is really more an area of principle.
What is truth? This seems like a rather heady question. To me, truth is many things. It is something that is profoundly individual, although it is unequivocally universal. My father says, “Truth is the accordance between thoughts and actions.” This definition seems rather absolute. But to me, truth is neither absolute nor definitive.
We spend a lot of time chasing the truth. Scientists are forever in quest of answers to lingering questions, students look for the “right” answer, and journalists look for irrefutable, objective fact. As people, we want to know who and what we are. But is the truth what we think, or is the truth what we see and are able to measure? I know now that there is a difference between the facts and the truth.
I went through a phase during which I was disgusted by liars, posers, phonies and fakers (this was during middle school when people actually used these words), and decided that I, at least, would only tell the truth. And I went a good two years, never telling a "lie," but I wasn't entirely righteous in so doing. I found out that you could leave out parts of stories without "lying." You could tell the truth without capturing what really happened. This type of lying was factual, but it was dishonest. It led me to see the difference between a fact and the truth.
A lie, I found, is when you don't believe yourself when you say something. I called in sick in high school a couple of times. According to my definition of the truth, I could've called in sick on any day; with my tainted immune system, I was always down with something or another. But if I hadn't done the homework, or if I was emotionally fatigued, that would be the day that I thought calling in sick was justified. Though I actually did feel sick in theory, it was no more unbearable than it was the day before: I used this "truth" to my advantage in a way that here can be deemed dishonest. Here my father's definition applies; my actions and thoughts were misaligned. But doing this too many times eats at your insides and makes you feel stupid when you have to explain what's wrong with you. The guilt of getting away with it always punished me more than any kind of reprimand.
This episode and others like it have convinced me that truth cannot be decided by another for you. Your truth is very much linked to the way you feel. As long as you are not lying to yourself about why you are committing an action, being truthful is not always contingent upon the facts. Sometimes you may have to pretend a little to save yourself from social disaster or to keep yourself going. You may act like you're happy when really you're terribly distressed. Sometimes you'll have to leave out the facts to better someone else's day. But in these cases, you are still acting according to your own ideals and being some type of truthful.
After I had this little epiphany, I decided that I could still be an honest person, without being a self-righteous fact-monger. I just knew that I would not act in a way that would force me to say something that I did not really agree with. It is always more embarrassing to have to explain the fact that you've lied than to own up to the truth. And it is much better to have someone's trust than to have someone's misplaced sympathy.
To keep myself honest, I make sure that I am the same person everywhere. Though I may fill different roles, I would be untrue to myself if I said one thing and did another. I try to avoid letting myself become resentful towards others without seeing what their point of view is. If I am really not okay with what someone does, I let them know, rather than letting the pressure build up inside like a soda that's been shaken up.
When I am in the midst of a dichotomy, and I don't know what I believe, I take some time. I listen to music, I talk to friends, and most importantly, I write down the way I feel and how I would feel if it were happening to a friend. In this way, I can make a decision as to how I feel, and what I should do. In doing this, I discover and seek my own truth. I look at my problems in more diverse ways and learn from the mistakes of others. The more I grown and learn, the less I think that the truth is a "one size fits all" formula.
This is an essay that I wrote in October 2009, and I think it was for a class assignment. I had forgotten about it until I was looking for meaning in my Google Docs. I think there's some pretty neat stuff in it, despite the embarrassing. I miss when I was forced to write essays about my feelings for class. I do this thing where I talk about "truth" but then I talk about "my truth," which is really more an area of principle.
What is truth? This seems like a rather heady question. To me, truth is many things. It is something that is profoundly individual, although it is unequivocally universal. My father says, “Truth is the accordance between thoughts and actions.” This definition seems rather absolute. But to me, truth is neither absolute nor definitive.
We spend a lot of time chasing the truth. Scientists are forever in quest of answers to lingering questions, students look for the “right” answer, and journalists look for irrefutable, objective fact. As people, we want to know who and what we are. But is the truth what we think, or is the truth what we see and are able to measure? I know now that there is a difference between the facts and the truth.
I went through a phase during which I was disgusted by liars, posers, phonies and fakers (this was during middle school when people actually used these words), and decided that I, at least, would only tell the truth. And I went a good two years, never telling a "lie," but I wasn't entirely righteous in so doing. I found out that you could leave out parts of stories without "lying." You could tell the truth without capturing what really happened. This type of lying was factual, but it was dishonest. It led me to see the difference between a fact and the truth.
A lie, I found, is when you don't believe yourself when you say something. I called in sick in high school a couple of times. According to my definition of the truth, I could've called in sick on any day; with my tainted immune system, I was always down with something or another. But if I hadn't done the homework, or if I was emotionally fatigued, that would be the day that I thought calling in sick was justified. Though I actually did feel sick in theory, it was no more unbearable than it was the day before: I used this "truth" to my advantage in a way that here can be deemed dishonest. Here my father's definition applies; my actions and thoughts were misaligned. But doing this too many times eats at your insides and makes you feel stupid when you have to explain what's wrong with you. The guilt of getting away with it always punished me more than any kind of reprimand.
This episode and others like it have convinced me that truth cannot be decided by another for you. Your truth is very much linked to the way you feel. As long as you are not lying to yourself about why you are committing an action, being truthful is not always contingent upon the facts. Sometimes you may have to pretend a little to save yourself from social disaster or to keep yourself going. You may act like you're happy when really you're terribly distressed. Sometimes you'll have to leave out the facts to better someone else's day. But in these cases, you are still acting according to your own ideals and being some type of truthful.
After I had this little epiphany, I decided that I could still be an honest person, without being a self-righteous fact-monger. I just knew that I would not act in a way that would force me to say something that I did not really agree with. It is always more embarrassing to have to explain the fact that you've lied than to own up to the truth. And it is much better to have someone's trust than to have someone's misplaced sympathy.
To keep myself honest, I make sure that I am the same person everywhere. Though I may fill different roles, I would be untrue to myself if I said one thing and did another. I try to avoid letting myself become resentful towards others without seeing what their point of view is. If I am really not okay with what someone does, I let them know, rather than letting the pressure build up inside like a soda that's been shaken up.
When I am in the midst of a dichotomy, and I don't know what I believe, I take some time. I listen to music, I talk to friends, and most importantly, I write down the way I feel and how I would feel if it were happening to a friend. In this way, I can make a decision as to how I feel, and what I should do. In doing this, I discover and seek my own truth. I look at my problems in more diverse ways and learn from the mistakes of others. The more I grown and learn, the less I think that the truth is a "one size fits all" formula.
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