"Your" Truth and Other Lies

In 2008 Stephen Covey began a speech at the University of Cumberlands with this story:

“It was a dark and stormy night.

Crewmember: “Captain, Captain, wake up.”

Captain: “Well?”

Crewmember: “Sorry to wake you, sir, but we have a serious problem.” Captain: “Well what is it?”

Crewmember: “There’s a ship in our sea lane about twenty miles away, and they refuse to move.”

Captain: “What do you mean they refuse to move? Just tell them to move.”

Crewmember: “Sir, we have told them; they will not move.”

Captain: “I’ll tell them.”

The signal goes out: “Move starboard 20 degrees.”

The signal returns: “Move starboard yourself 20 degrees.”

Captain: “I can’t believe this. Well, I mean I’m a captain. Let them know who I am. I’m important.”

Signal goes out: “This is Captain Horatio Hornblower XXVI, commanding you to move starboard 20 degrees at once.”

Signal returns: “This is Seaman Carl Jones II, commanding you to move starboard 20 degrees at once.”

Captain: “What arrogance? I mean, what presumption? Here is a seaman commanding me, a captain. We could just blow them right out of the water. We could just let them know who we are.

Signal: “This is the Mighty Missouri, flag ship of the 7th fleet.”

The signal returns: “This is the lighthouse.”

I've thought of this story often as I've watched the world break up with reality. I imagine the fruitlessness of barreling towards the immovable rocks that lie ahead, as too many people are convinced that there is no such thing as the absolute... of the rocks.

The first time I heard someone talk about "his" truth - taking ownership of it with a pronoun, I cringed, but didn't know why. And then suddenly, I was hearing this ownership pronoun everywhere, and the cringe never abated. It worsened. It was like I was peering at one of those cartoon drawings in the old Highlights magazine for children, which had the caption over it: "What's wrong with this picture?" - and there's a moose head in the cookie jar.

The more I thought about it, it finally hit me. The problem with 'owning' truth with a personal pronoun suggests something which is at best frightfully untrue, and is at worst grimly dangerous.

Most people, when they speak of their own truth in this way mean nothing pernicious or nefarious - it's simply a way of saying - "This is what I know to be true, based on my personal vantage point and life experiences." But the trend seems to have taken hold and infected collective thinking with the notion that truth is a different set of realities for every person, and isn't absolute.

Like the lighthouse.

Of course, our ability to recognize and accept truth is vastly different between every single individual human. It's vastly different even inside one person's lifetime. Knowing that fact is important in remaining vulnerable to accepting truth. Life experiences should give us new perspective, and keep our ability to accept truth fluid and flexible. But that doesn't make truth fluid and flexible.

It's been important for me to recognize this. My personal life experiences have taught me to be committed to absolute reality, no matter the cost. And sometimes, it costs a lot.

Many years ago, while adjusting to motherhood, I read M. Scott Peck's book, The Road Less Traveled. Well. I started it. At least a half dozen times. I couldn't get past the first sentence for months: "Life is hard." It was at this point I would promptly shut the book - I didn't need that kind of negativity in my life.

One day when I tried again, and read that same vile sentence, a nearly visceral "AMEN" exploded in my heart and mind. I was finally able to read past that first sentence, and finish a book which was seminal in my personal growth.

In the first section of the book, Peck talks about several strategies that are important for continued growth and improvement. One of these is our ability to revise our “map” of reality as we gain new perspective of its landscape:

"What happens when one has striven long and hard to develop a working view of the world, a seemingly useful, workable map, and then is confronted with new information suggesting that the view is wrong and the map needs to be largely redrawn? The painful effort required seems frightening, almost overwhelming. What we do more often than not, and usually unconsciously, is to ignore the new information. Often this act of ignoring is much more than passive. We may denounce the new information as false, dangerous, heretical, the work of the devil. We may actually crusade against it, and even attempt to manipulate the world so as to make it conform to our view of reality. Rather than try to change the map, an individual may try to destroy the new reality." ― M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth

Reading this book was where this important truth started to take root in me:

Real is always real.

It's humanity which is in a constant state of fluid and flexible - and let me add here - fickle. Human emotion is more unpredictable than the weather. But real just keeps being... real... whether I like it or not.

Like the lighthouse. Or more to the point - like the rocks.

Today, truth - or reality - has become inconvenient and troublesome to far too many. It's no longer a hard-and-fast absolute that must be dealt with and accepted, something which causes us to change our point of view by revising that map. Instead of recognizing that the lack of accepting reality must be addressed and corrected, there are now as many versions of reality as there are people. Why is this? The world's ability to accept reality has eroded, and with it, in large part, a foundation of stability beneath society's feet. How stable can life be if reality is up for consensus in the focus group? How certain can anyone be - of anything - if absolutes don't exist anymore.

The biggest reality that must be overlooked for everyone to feel safe and comfortable in "their" own truth is that there is a God who created this world. And because He is God, He doesn't change. He doesn't change because He cannot change. It's against His very nature, and if He did, He would cease to be... God (Alma 42:13).

The real existence of God and His laws are described in such a way as to underscore the immovable nature of the rocks beneath the lighthouse in this excerpt from a speech by Cecil B. DeMille, director of the film, The Ten Commandments:

"Some, who do not know either the Bible or human nature, may see in the orgy of the Golden Calf only a riot of Hollywood's imaginations - but those who have eyes to see will see in it the awful lesson of how quickly a nation or a man can fall, without God's law.

" If man will not be ruled by God, he will certainly be ruled by tyrants - and there is no tyranny more imperious or more devastating than man's own selfishness, without the law.

"We cannot break the Ten Commandments. We can only break ourselves against them - or else, by keeping them, rise through them to the fulness of freedom under God. God means us to be free. With divine daring, He gave us the power of choice (Cecil B. DeMille, BYU Commencement Address, 31 May 1957)."

There really is no such thing as someone's personal truth - only his or her personal experience with absolute truth. The healthiest people never tire in seeking for it, and are healthy enough to do the mental, emotional, and spiritual work to revise their map, and change their course, steering away from the rocks.

With the help of the Lighthouse.