04 Sep

Our Love Affair with Truth

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When we find something we believe to be true we enter into a kind of relationship with that truth. In a very real way, we fall in love with that truth. We honor it by accepting it into our hearts. We consult it when making our judgments and decisions. We defend its virtues vigorously and forgive it’s faults generously. Because we consider truth to be good, we are proud of ourselves for finding it. We consider ourselves fortunate for knowing it and pity those that do not. Sometimes we do more than pity those that don’t share the same truth. We condemn, belittle and stifle all voices contrary to our beloved truth. The love affair continues until we are wooed by an even larger truth that we find is undeniable. When this happens, it’s just like ending any intense love affair. Denial, anger, confusion and then, the messy break up. In many cases, we will look back at the old discarded truth with resentment. Lamenting the time spent believing as a waste and that we are fools for loving such an incomplete truth. “How foolish we were to believe in Santa Claus.” It is this love affair that makes honest, civil discourse and debate so challenging. It often takes on the desperate tone of fighting for your deepest loved one instead of opening ourselves to finding greater, deeper levels of truth and therefore, of love.

Let us loosen our desperate grip on what we think is true to make way for new possibilities. Who knows what we could learn? Who knows what we could love?