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Truth, Veritas

Truth is subjective

Truth is subjective. We want to believe that it’s not, that there is a universal right and wrong, a simple definition of good and evil. We search for objective reason in everything in our lives, but the truth about truth is that it is subjective. It depends on perspective, on experience, on the ways that we’ve let life, time, and the world shape, influence, and, ultimately, change us.

What is true for one person – what they base their beliefs and values and morals upon – may be vastly different for someone else. Culture, tradition, nationality, race, religion, gender, sexuality – all the details that make us who we are – affect how we define truth. While we may all be driven by a universal unity in our fundamental being and existence, we can’t deny that our individual, unique experiences alter our perception of what we identify as being true.

Especially in today’s society where “fake news” and “alternative facts” are seemingly all too prevalent, undeniable Truth is hard to pin down. When every keyboard crusader can become an expert in manipulating information and promoting subtle deceit, it’s increasingly difficult to know what to believe and who to trust. And that’s what makes truth so elusive these days. It’s also what makes it so dangerous. Wars are fought, people and places are wiped out, and irreparable decisions are made on a global scale, all in the name of Truth. Because we convince ourselves that it is objective, that our particular brand of truth is the only real and right one, we destroy one another based on something entirely subjective.

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It’s human nature to seek answers to questions – particularly the unanswerable ones. We look for meaning and substance in every occurrence. We search for solutions to problems constantly, seeking ways to keep learning and growing into something more, something better. And that’s why we value truth as a definitive part of our lives. That is why we praise honesty, sincerity, authenticity in ourselves and each other. We demand it in our relationships with those around us and we punish the ones who don’t give it to us.

The ironic thing about it is that, while we hold others to exceptional (and sometimes impossible) standards of truth, we tend to blur the lines and fudge the details when it comes to our own truthfulness. As with love and unity, the concept of truth becomes cloudy due to our own self-interest and sense of self-preservation. We lie all the time. We lie to each other in an attempt to spare feelings, we lie to ourselves to justify our actions, we lie for countless reasons in vastly varied circumstances.

As much as we may want to value and promote the pure, honourable concept of truth, the truth of the matter is that we manipulate it when it suits us. And, even if it’s not done on a conscious level, the truth alters and changes as time goes by. We develop and learn and grow and our perception of what is true alters and changes alongside us.

So, instead of pretending to believe in objective truth and instead of attempting to convince one another that our individual truth is truer than true, perhaps we should accept truth for being what it is – a subjective, biased, ever-evolving point of view that permeates into every aspect of who we are and what we do. And if we can accept that, maybe we can start to approach each other and the world around us with a more open, tolerant, and curious attitude towards what is and isn’t undeniably true.

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Unitas, Unity

Unity is universal

Unity is universal. Every single one of us wants to feel like we belong.

Life is an ongoing search for unity, for a feeling of belonging, for a sense of community that relinquishes us from our lonely existence – even if just for a brief moment. At least when it comes to humans, we are much more alike than we are different. We all have the same basic wants and needs, even if the details aren’t quite the same.

It is in those details,though, that our unity breaks down. Like with love, we warp the meaning of the concept and we complicate it until it is no longer recognizable. We tend to forget the origin of our oneness as a species and we focus on aspects that separate instead of unite us.

And that is a significant problem that has permeated across millennia, across generations and cultures, across people and places. It is a problem that has led to hatred, to wars, to so much unnecessary destruction and death. Instead of approaching other people with an open mind, free from judgments and predisposed biases, we project our insecurities and unfounded fears onto them. We scan for what is different; we suppress what is the same. We treat each other with love and kindness only when we feel it is warranted, earned, or deserved. When it is not, we prefer hatred and cruelness or, at the very least, indifferent disdain. And that warps our gentle natures and makes us forget that we all have the same desires to feel safe and free and loved.

Our similarities are what matter. They are what make us united in our humanity. They are what make us feel that sense of belonging that we all seek so desperately throughout our lives. The differences are mere details. It’s important that we remember that when approaching someone else, be it a friend or a stranger.

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Caritas, Love

Love is simple

Love is simple. Like most other concepts, it’s us humans that make it complicated, much more complicated than it needs to be.

At its core, love is two main things: caring about someone and wanting to support them in whatever way you can. That’s it. Really.

Just think about it. The people in your life that you love – your family, your friends, your significant other(s) – you just want them to be happy. You want them to do well in life and you want to be there to help them when they might not being doing so well. You want to make it easier for them to get through the day, especially when it’s a more difficult day to get through.

The part that makes it complicated is the expectations, the conditions, that we impose on the people we love. We believe that they belong to us, that we possess them. We enforce limits and labels to claim them as our own and no one else’s – not even their own self – in exchange for our love. We feel entitled to receive something back for our caring and support. We expect it. And when it doesn’t pan out exactly the way we envision it to, when it doesn’t meet our expectations, we feel let down and disappointed.

And, more often than not, we punish the people we love for failing to meet those expectations that we set out for them. Maybe not directly, maybe not even consciously, but we do. We get mad, we get sad, we yell and scream and push them away because we’re hurt that they let us down. It doesn’t even matter to us in that moment that perhaps they didn’t mean to. Perhaps their intention was never to disappoint us, but life got in the way and shit happened, as it does, and the result was less than optimal. In our disappointment, we tend to solely focus on being hurt and, in turn, we usually end up hurting those people back as some form of vindication.

As a result, we become selfish with our love instead of letting it flow freely. The bottomless well of pureness that we started out with becomes poisoned by resentment. And, over the years, we fill up our mental scoreboards for each of the people we love with all of the ways they’ve done us wrong. We hold grudges, we lash out, we subscribe to the age old adage of an eye for an eye.

But, as entitled as we may feel to some reciprocal, equal ideal of love, the fact of the matter is that we don’t stop loving people just because they let us down. At least not right away. We all have a limit to how willing we are to be hurt by the people that we love. And, as the resentments start piling up and the scoreboard gets tallied, we decide whether or not that particular person is still worthy of our love. We decide whether or not they are still deserving.

Because that’s what us humans do. We take a simple concept that is pure and good and we turn it into something twisted and warped based on our own individual life experiences. We let our expectations and inevitable disappointments taint us and change us and harden us against each other, against the world.

And then we’re surprised that we feel so alone, so unsatisfied, so unloved. We’re surprised that our conditions for loving and being loved turn that pure, unconditional love that we started with into nothing more than a checklist, a scoreboard, a way of keeping track of our unfulfilled expectations.

But is it really that surprising?

Love is simple. Don’t complicate it.

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Caritas, Love, Truth, Unitas, Unity, Veritas

Love, Unity, and Truth

We spend a lot of time in our lives lying. We lie to strangers to seem better or more interesting than we are. We lie to loved ones to spare their feelings or protect them from something. At least that’s what we tell ourselves.

Worst of all, we lie to ourselves. And we do it for various reasons, all seemingly justifiable at first glance. But upon deeper investigation, it turns out that a lie is still a lie and simply trying to convince ourselves otherwise is both exhausting and impossible.

So here we are. We’re all striving for the same things in life. These things we all want break down into three overarching pillars – caritas, unitas, veritas or love, unity, truth.

We all wish to be loved, to give love, to feel love. We all want to be a part of something bigger than ourselves, to feel unity in our hearts through family and community. And we all want to have love and unity that is genuine, authentic, and truthful. These three pillars are intertwined. They overlap and ebb and flow and blur into each other. That’s what makes them so critical in our lives. They are so deeply interconnected and play such vastly important roles in the life of every single human being, whether we recognize that or not.

 

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