The title of this post is kind of a joke, but also not really. The concept of truth is something that I believe a lot of us struggle with, whether we realize it or not. What we believe to be the truth can sometimes be an illusion we create for ourselves to pretend like we have control over certain aspects of our lives. We use it as a way to help define ourselves and our beliefs. Whenever these beliefs get challenged, this becomes an issue.
Let’s say that you grew up with great, loving parents. You had an awesome childhood filled with love, laughter, the white picket fence, and everything. Then, one day, your parents sit you down and tell you that you were adopted. Your whole world begins to fall apart. Everything you thought you knew about yourself was built upon the fact that these people were your parents. You might begin to question who you actually are or get mad that they didn’t tell you sooner. Seriously, take time to imagine how you would feel if your parents were to tell you this at this exact moment.
The reality of the situation is that receiving that information doesn’t change a single thing. All it changes is your own personal perception of your childhood. You still had a great childhood. Your parents still love you very much. But now that something you thought was true turned out to be false, you feel different. You obviously don’t have control over who your parents are or what other people tell you. You can see, however, that even in a scenario that you have no control over, confronting the truth can be difficult.
Confronting the truth becomes even more difficult when they are internal things you tell yourself. A personal example of this came recently from confronting the truth about the shame and guilt I’ve been holding inside since I was a child. I had become so accustomed to ignoring and pretending like this shame and guilt didn’t exist, that when I finally came face to face with it, I didn’t want to accept it. Accepting it meant accepting the fact I’ve been making life decisions for years that were influenced by my trying to avoid having to feel those feelings. It’s kind of a mind-fuck when you really think about it.
Accepting the plain and honest truth isn’t easy. The truth oftentimes doesn’t fit into the current narratives we create for ourselves as we navigate through life. Many of us want to believe that we’re always good, kind, and loving people. So when we do something shitty, rather than admitting we did something shitty, our egos will find a way to justify why the shitty thing we did wasn’t actually shitty. That’s because our egos want us to keep believing that we’re always good people. This same example works vice versa as well. If you believe you’re a shitty person and then do something good, you’ll find a way to justify that doing one good thing doesn’t inherently make you a good person who is worthy of forgiveness.
Our egos work very hard to create these versions of ourselves. Whenever we are confronted with a truth that goes against this, we fight like fucking hell. We don’t want to believe that something else could be true because we have built entire lives based on some of these traits or qualities. We don’t do this on purpose, it’s part of being human. Once we realize this, healing becomes much more manageable.
Only the truth can set you free
Jesus, probably
It becomes much easier to change the parts of ourselves that no longer serve us. You can’t let something go if you don’t believe it’s there to begin with. The next time your ego gets triggered, rather than react or fight the feelings that come up, try leaning into them to discover why you get triggered in the first place. You might just uncover the truth.