Truth be Told

What is truth? We live in a world where everyone wants to be heard and no one wants to listen. The goal in communication seems to be to get the point across instead of listening to the other party to see another point of view. Not many people look at a situation with an objective eye, nine times out of ten they view it with judgmental vision. Perception can be tainted by many things, prejudices, past experiences with someone or something etc. If you were to ask three people what truth is to them, I believe you will get three different answers. Why, because it is their version of truth. What you have been taught and what you have been exposed to is your truth. Think about how stories are told when there is confrontation between two people, most times each party will tell their truth while lobbying for votes, hoping that the listener will take their version of the story to be true but when you understand the nature of the people involved most times it is not hard to determine what possibly happened in the situation. In all situations I do my best to listen with a neutral ear, but it is not always easy, some people are very convincing. My pastor used to tell us you can only operate off the basis of your understanding and what you believe to be true. I feel like this has been the breakdown of many conversations because people do not always listen to learn or understand, most times they only listen to be heard. While seeming to be attentive to what you are saying they are waiting to tell you “Their Truth”. There are always three sides to a story, what really happened, what you believe to have happened, and what the other person believes to have happened. How you received the situation is your truth because that is what you perceived it to be. However, that is not the deciding factor of who is right or wrong. Two people can experience the same thing and tell you a story of what they perceived to be true but both stories may be completely different. Does that make any one of them wrong for what they believe to be true, or does that give you another way to view what happened?

Here is a very good example of an event that was experienced by

four people. Growing up my siblings and I were placed in foster care all for

the same reason but eventually ended up in four different homes. We all were

placed in foster care for the same reason, only two of us experienced the

misfortune of the events, but we all bore the same consequences. While in

foster care each of us had different experiences therefore came out with a different

perspective on life and a different story to tell but it is our truth. I am

sure if you spoke with the four of us you will get four very different stories.

When we came out of foster care, we all lived in the same house with the same mother,

but how we perceived things to be are very different. Why am I telling you

this? I am telling you this because I believe our society has lost site on the

fact that it is okay to be different, there is nothing wrong with seeing things

differently and we should never be so stubborn in our own beliefs that we

paralyze our ability to learn something new.

Life does not look the same to everyone and there are no two people that handle it the same way. That is what makes us all unique and that is what makes the mind so interesting to me, each mind gives you a different way of looking at things. One of my favorite sayings is “Let’s agree to disagree”. There is no story more significant or less important than the other and just because your truth is different from my truth, that does not make either of them right or wrong; we just believe differently and that’s okay. We have been brought up in a very competitive society. When it is understood that the only person we should be in competition with is ourselves there will be more focus on self-improvement than throwing shade and passing judgement because we will be focused on becoming the best person that we can be. Truth be told it took me some time to learn this and it is my goal to share and express this to anyone that will listen. Communication is one of the most important things in this world and one of the most misused things in the world, which is very sad. Wars have been started over poor communication, marriages have fallen apart, division has been formed in families and friendships have died because of it. I often wonder if people will ever understand that honest communication can clear up allot of misunderstandings. Don’t get me wrong, I believe there will be hurt feelings over truth sometimes because not everyone can handle the truth. It is such a controversial subject to discuss because although people always say they want you to keep it real with them, that is not always true. The moment you attempt to bring the truth to them they want to shut you out by cutting all communication with you, which was the problem in the first place. So, where you were dealing with poor communication now you have no communication. How do we fix this? Honestly, I don’t think that we can solve the worlds problems with communication but if we work on ourselves by how we give and receive in communication that is a pretty good start. If we focus less on how others conduct themselves and conduct yourself in a manner that is pleasing to us there may be less frustration. Understand this one thing, communication is only successful when both parties are listening to hear each other not waiting to respond.