The Truth, Part 2

I’m still on the truth. Partly because it’s interesting, and partly because it’s so elusive. It’s all wrapped up in the verb to be, the usefulness of which I came to doubt in a Victorian literature class when the instructor started talking about Modern Painters, Aristotle, and Plato. I was reviewing music and a great realization swept over me, that what I was hearing was probably nothing like what someone else was hearing. So, where was the truth in that?

So, the next time out I started talking about the music from my perspective with a nod to the listener and the managing editor promptly told me that readers wanted a definitive opinion. No more “seems like”, he wanted is or was. I complied, but I was fairly certain my career as a critic was over, but I didn’t much care, because it was mostly something I was doing because it was fun, convenient, and paid a few bills. Eventually, the job went away.

But the lesson stuck and I became a permanent skeptic and no fan of black or white. The truth became something you had to work at which meant every assumption was up for review and worth questioning. I became a fan of facts, although I realized even those were things that had to be reviewed and parsed and most people didn’t really want to talk about it. They liked the world they had created for themselves and didn’t much care that something else might be poking around in the shadows waiting to be seen.