Ooops. I did it again. Spoke with the “royal we” from the stance of collective truth teller, and my husband called me out on it over pour over coffee and Wordle. “Did you know…?” he began, and then told me how much I write as if I know it all. Emmbarrasssinnng.
This avant-blog1 dances around two concepts: truth and truthiness. I loved how Stephen Colbert used the term “truthiness” in his show The Colbert Report, because it struck at a phenomena I’ve noticed over the years: some things sound true, but aren’t, or simply aren’t true for everyone. And if you say something with enough authority, folks will react as if it is real. Yet, some notions are just tricky, or funny, or kind of seem like they are true, but aren’t universally true. How can we discern?
‘Truthiness’ reminds me that lots of things seem true, to me, and that maybe I can’t fathom the complete truth. My ignorance becomes more clear to me, the more I think I know how life works. And, I’m okay with this. This tension is where I grow.
I also know that everything I teach to others in love, may bite me in my keister down the road. Since I’ve been seeking ‘enlightenment’ most of my life — and enlightenment ain’t that pretty as far as I can glean, this is bound to be a wild ride for anyone in a teacher/student relationship with me. So, I’m wondering now if following = me could upset people, much like I’ve been upset by my teachers– the best ones anyway. It’s part of the process of death and rebirth, of dying to our egos and becoming our most soulful selves. Becoming our own authority. We listen, we learn, we try, we get results. Our REAL and TRUE selves emerge somehow through this process if we just keep going.
I’ll call the process of overturning beliefs mindset reckoning.
Yet, I still want to share the things I’ve learned, so I write. My husband pointed out my overuse of phrases like “the truth is…” “the fact is…” And this is downright embarrassing. My desire to teach the things I’ve learned, has crept into my language as some kind of authoritative lecture.
If I’ve learned anything, it’s that everything I believe can be overturned in an instant—kind of like waking up in a completely opposite quantum reality.
I do know some things, but who doesn’t? Maybe the question before I “teach and preach” is, who would want to live the way I do? Seriously, sometimes I don’t even want to. It’s not easy, but I have loved learning even from the hard times. I have also loved sharing what I’ve learned. It makes me feel like I’m contributing to the goodness here. Huh! Embarrassing again.
Voice of humility: truth, or trickery?
Luckily, or unluckily for me, I have a family that is pretty sure they are superior to most others. Lovingly superior, and of the highest moral nobility, but hiding among the middle class. Hey, that’s what I was raised with, I’m not saying it is accurate.
In my 20s, I told my dad that it was arrogant to think of myself as “better than” or of superior moral code to others, and that I desired a more egalitarian world view. I told him that I wanted to be humble. He just smiled gently like I was a child and said, “well, some people are just superior.” My step dad just said, “beware, humility only comes from humiliation.”
