Why Telling The Truth Is So Hard

(Even the New York Times, in their new ad campaign, “The Truth Is Hard,” is pushing the message that we’ve  got to all get on board with truth.)

Here is a selection of articles from my take on the issue.  Dig into them, again and again. They are filled with nuggets of wisdom on truth telling!

The “real deal” about telling the truth that makes it so hard is that –

1. Most of us learned to, at least, bend the truth as kids growing up to keep the grown-ups off our backs; and then --
   
2. Certain of our experiences even went so far as to teach us the lesson that our survival might depend on not telling the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth;
3. Furthermore most of us have not gotten a fair enough dose of healthy role modeling on the pride and the joy of truth-telling;
4. Finally, for now, ours is not a culture where truth telling is praised and honored. Quite the contrary, frequently there are daunting consequences for truth telling.  

Here is a quote from noted psychiatrist R.D. Laing that I have found to best state some of our learned challenges with truth telling, even knowing how to assess truth. I’ve witnessed the difficulies repeatedly in my close to forty-five years in the mental health field --  and – in my personal life too.

Lecturing on findings of some of his important research on the origins of mental illness, Laing stated –

In most families, children are taught “not to see what they are seeing, or to forget what they have seen, and then to remember to forget what they have seen, because if you don’t remember to forget you will remember. So, you’ve got to remember to forget it, or you’ve got to remember all the time not to see what you are seeing.  And then you’ve got to somehow or other cut yourself off from a recognition that that is what you are doing – so that you no longer are aware, or you can no longer know that you are remembering to forget what you’ve seen. Or you have to act upon yourself in order not to see what you are seeing…. 

All is finally cut off by a final injunction… against seeing that any of that behind what you are allowed to see is going on at all. And by that time, you have rendered yourself, by action of your mind on your mind, almost totally unconscious.

Now, take a moment and think on that!  Pretty complex stuff to wrap your mind around, dontch'a think? But unfortunately more true than not!

Then go further and ask yourself how a person like Donald Trump might have learned to separate himself so fully from seeing and dealing with reality! And what does his election say about his supporters who think his lying is okay? (Not all do, I know. They are not who I am addressing here.)

Now what about you?

If you’ve been reading my blogs you know I have been believing for a long, long time that my eye problems are directly tied to an injunction I experienced as coming from a mentally ill mother to not see what I see! An even greater difficulty seems to have been, however, that somehow I did not have trouble seeing and knowing what I saw. Rather my borderline mother cursed me not to“say” what I “saw” under threat of punishment by death!

Or so I believed, as that is what I was told, often while I was being beaten. 

I’m doing real well now speaking of whatever I see. Writing for this blog site has helped me immeasurable. Additionally, I have, for close forty-five years, been teaching, guiding and supporting others in learning to do the same; telling the truth to power or otherwise, just to know it and say it.

Please get out from whatever obstacles you may be facing about telling truth, knowing truth, facing truth and expecting others to do that same!!

Our country’s well being needs this kind of soldiering from each and every one of us.

Now please join New Horizons and myself in our Truth or Dare campaign, a part of our new Making Violence Obsolete Movement which is under our overall Small "Zones of Peace" Project.