Over the weekend, walking through downtown Northampton, Massachusetts, I passed this utility box:
Truth is powerful and will prevail.
I believe that, maybe now more than ever, in what Ken Wilber calls "the post-truth world."
When truth gets bent, it becomes a tool for power and oppression. Sojourner Truth knew that nearly two centuries ago. Honoring what's true, especially the truths of others that run counter to our own, feels essential.
Standing there on the street as my family walked ahead, I started wondering what truth means to me. Over the past year I've come to see that some truths I held as absolute were actually relative.
The deeper I went into my own healing and coaching work, the more I realized certain truths about myself. Teachers I trust and respect taught me that my thoughts and feelings were unarguable, and somewhere along the way, unarguable became absolute. I believed if I didn't honor these truths, I'd be violating my own selfhood.
Earlier this year, one of my so-called truths collided with my marriage. Eliza wanted more attention and intimacy, and yet I felt she was unwilling to meet some of my wants, so I dug in. My truth said I shouldn't have to give what I wasn't receiving.
I resisted for weeks, until I saw that my ego was running the show and making the divide even bigger. When I finally set my truth aside for the sake of her and our relationship, I discovered it wasn't a truth at all. It was a defense mechanism, and it was protecting me from the very thing we both wanted: closeness. My truth was robbing me of the nourishment I longed for and calling it integrity.
Watching this truth dissolve in less than twenty four hours sent me looking back at the truths I've held across my life. What I believed as a teenager, a young professional, an addict, a partner at a VC firm, all seemed true from where I stood at the time. Almost none of it survived the passage of time, and frankly I don't miss those truths. Most of them I've forgotten even existed. What felt like bedrock turned out to be a feature of a season.
I still think it matters to honor what's true for us now, and there are no doubt principles in me the seasons will never erode, but perhaps that's a thread for another note.
What I'm left with is a question I now ask when I feel myself digging in: is this really a truth, or is it a defense guarding the door to the thing I actually want?