The young woman protested that she was pretty much dedicated to the truth. Unfortunately, the version of the truth she clung to was hurting her. She believed some very negative things about herself. Perhaps there was an element of truth in what she thought of herself, but from an outsider’s perspective those negative self-assessments were not the whole truth. They were, however, what she chose to dwell upon. As a result, her life was going nowhere good.
She brought to mind the question: what is more important, truth or efficacy? If the story you tell yourself about yourself is true, but it hurts you and creates pain and suffering for others as well, is it better to believe that or to create a belief that would support you in having a better life?
Is a little delusion better for you than a hard but more realistic view? Who is happier, the person who thinks their spouse is the most attractive person in the world or someone who acknowledges that their mate is roughly average looking? In this case, a little self-delusion is probably healthier.
As an idea, nothing is more important than Truth. It rates up there with love, beauty and justice. Dedication to the truth is a useful guiding principle for our lives. On the other hand, we must also deal with the problem of subjectivity. Our minds operate by picking the most relevant data from a vast field of information. In so doing, we form preferences for certain kinds of information. Perhaps we have done something bad—maybe repeatedly. We may then decide that we are a bad person. Our data selector then picks all the occurrences of our being bad as the most relevant information. We can hold this strong belief in our badness and support it with facts. We may then hold a true belief about ourselves that is over-simplistic and not really helpful. It ignores the times when we have done good. It ignores the truth that everyone does bad sometimes and good sometimes.
Our minds are messy. We flail around looking for truth and we live behind a veil of illusion. We don’t really know who we are. We make up a picture of who we are based on our best guesses. If we cling too tightly to that image we may be doing ourselves a disservice. If we look at the world and recognize the truth of the inevitability of suffering, we can become discouraged and hopeless. Or we can attend to a different truth that what we do matters and that there is a way to live well and a possibility of transcending the burden of suffering.
Ask yourself:
What do I tell myself about myself?
What are my core beliefs--my basic assumptions about myself and my place in the world?
How well do those beliefs serve?
Might I find a way to shift my beliefs to some that give me better results?
An event viewed from different perspectives provides different versions of the truth. Seek to enhance your understanding of the truth by seeing what you can from other people’s perspectives. Imagine, perhaps that you are someone else interacting with you. What would their experience be like?
© 2009 Tom Barrett