Some thoughts about truth...

Here are some notes about this elusive idea we call truth, courtesy of the greats:

"A lie told often enough becomes the truth." -Lenin

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple." -Oscar Wilde

"The truth is more important than the facts." -Frank Lloyd Wright

And now, some of my own thoughts on the matter:

This is what I know:

I don’t know anything for sure.

I think too much.

Some would call me a dreamer; some would call me a realist.

They would both be right.

I read once that people often remember things that never actually happened. I also read that people can repress actual memories until they become impossible to remember. Our minds betray us all the time. Between the imagined memories and the irretrievable ones, how do we know what is true? This is simple:

There is no truth.

The funny thing about life is that what we call "truth" in any situation is really just a simple matter of perception. In any given account of something, the truth is comprised of each person's experience of it, which, in terms of perception, could be completely different truths. As F. L. Wright acknowledged, the truth is different from the facts.

I am working on my own version of truth now, in my life. It has been brought to my attention that the way I intend to appear when I speak or act sometimes is perceived in a way much different than what I had intended. I am trying to be more conscious of this, but I still struggle with this question: in the gap between what I say and what my audience sees, what is lost? Will I ever be perceived as I intend? Or am I doomed to be forever misunderstood?

What a tragic thought.

Even now, how do I know that you're understanding this the way I mean? Well, I don't. So form your own truth, and remember that truth is elusive and changing. When you perceive something, remind yourself that it is only that: perception... the stuff of life.

Isn't inconstancy the stuff of life, anyway? Where would the fun be otherwise?