TOW: Hard Truths

Pontius Pilate is notorious for having uttered the sardonic phrase, "What is truth?" This, of course, was probably funnier to him than the one who was getting crucified. (Although if you're a Christian, you're pretty sure God had the last laugh in that scenario.) While I don't want talk about truth itself, I would like to talk about a certain kind of truth. Namely, the hard truth. The one you don't want to face when you get out of bed in the morning and look yourself in the mirror. Yes, it's the receding hair line that is slowly retreating, or the crow's feet that's mutated into the Reading Railroad all over your face; it's the hard, cold, and often bitter truth.


Sometimes when we experience difficulty in our lives, we are faced with some information we don't like to process. (Guess who just payed off their entire credit card bill. Eh heh. Sigh.) The hard truth is that one thing we don't want to admit about ourselves, that one thing we hide to help us sleep at night.

Nietzsche was famous for saying that humans needs to lie to themselves, at least a little bit, so that they can go on living. And the reason is because if we knew everything about ourselves, we wouldn't want to go on living. We need some mystery in our own personalities, so that we can become more than we are. And a little bit of mystery is good thing. The last thing we need is "Bam! You're ugly! Bam! You're fat! Bam! Bam! Bam!" After a while, we would be paranoid, unable to trust others or believe in our own abilities, and life would just be generally lame. And we'd all be on the Jenny Craig Diet.

However, we can't always avoid the hard truth. The one that you're writing in your diary at three in the morning. The hard truth that other people say when they know you've been avoiding it. The worst part about the hard truth, is that we're afraid that if we start believing the hard and cold truth, we'll be a lesser human being, that we'll have failed somehow.

Surprisingly, once we face a hard truth, we usually feel more at ease. Being able to look at truth, regardless of how hard it is to bear, is always refreshing. And that's because it's exhausting to avoid facts that pop-up and try and present themselves to us every day. After a while, all that lying to ourselves tires us out more than just dealing with our own issues. (Which, of course, is crazy.)

A little bit of blindness keeps us in balance in a fair way. It keeps us from failing. A lot of blindness requires a seeing-eye dog. Or a slap in the face.

And that's the truth.