The Privilege of Truth
And other things that we are not entitled to
I love when people talk about the truth as the supreme, all-powerful. It is far easier to celebrate honesty when it isn’t coming crackling down on our lofty ideas of self.
In this mortal limited life, I have resorted to the fact that it is lying, that comes more naturally to us. The singularity of truth makes it so easy to destroy it so much so that any minor tweak in our narrative is the destruction of this all-powerful truth.
What even is the truth?
But why is it so important to tell the truth?
Why must I have all my cards on the table?
Why must you know?
Why must I tell you?
Do I even know my own truth?
We are all heroes in our narratives.
No one can tell me that I am lying when I say that a woman, unprovoked, threw wet salami at my face. And no one can tell the same woman that she is lying when she says that she felt deeply provoked when I was saying that buying meat is violence. We both have different truths.
No single narrative can have any bearing on another — if all telling is truth-telling, there’s no such thing as showing someone wrong. This, in turn, renders it impossible to call anyone to account, since scrutiny is simply the questioning of whether someone might be wrong.
That failure of accountability is pervasive in times of crisis, as we know all too well. But without accountability, any crisis can produce many more crises. Accountability, once discredited, is desperately hard to revive.
“I can’t trust you anymore.”
“Oh, can’t you now? After all the grief you have given me for honesty, what makes you think you are entitled to the truth?”
We lie when we feel unsafe. We lie when we want to preserve peace, however fleeting that preservation may be. We lie because nobody likes consequences. Nobody likes conflict and everyone hates being thought less of.
We lie for freedom as kids because we know it does a better job than the truth. So many questions, so many doubts, and unreasonable disapprovals.
The burden of truth-telling is unfairly borne by the teller as if the listener were to have no part to play in this transaction.
I have always been a very reactive person. I tend to explode and impose my ideas of right and wrong on people. I would rate myself as a non-accepting and unagreeable person. I know saying it aloud does not absolve me of anything, but I realise that it disables people from telling the truth out of no fault of their own.
I have learned that the truth between two people lies at the intersection of respect, love, accountability, and comfort. This intersection is about as thin as a hairline and seldom found between people. This intersection chafes or swells with time subject to how carefully both tellers and listeners respond to moments of truth.
Lying comes from fear and it is self-serving. We never lie to protect others we lie to protect ourselves from judgment.
Simply put, lying is emotional anaesthesia. It can defer the pain, but it isn’t the cure.
“This did not happen.” “This is not how it happened.” “But my side of the story is…”
It is all valid.
We do what we do to preserve our sanity, even if it means lying. Our childhoods are so different. So many parents measure their children’s worth by unreasonable standards that the fear of disappointing them compels these children to lie to avoid the feelings of invalidation. If we value honesty over other things, we must relinquish the idea of perfection in our parents, our partners, our children, and our friends.
We feel our mistakes are bigger than us, but they never are. At least not to the people who love us.
Much like us, they aren’t perfect and when we choose to love them, we choose to accept their mistakes. We don’t have to love them for those mistakes but not loving them has far worse consequences.
I can’t promise but I want to be able to listen to you when you can’t bear to listen to yourself. I know it is horrible to serve your weakest moments to people who matter but when and if the time comes, we will take your weakest moments, talk about them at length, lock them up and visit them when you want to as episodes from your very colourful life. And I will tell you it’s fine and you can restore your peace because I will love you despite it.
Some people deserve the truth, and you would be a fool to not tell them. I have been a fool many times but there is no joy greater than the joy of having all your cards on the table and being loved despite them, for them. To be known and to be loved by the same person, at the same time and at the same place is a dream and I hope you get to live it.
