What is truth? Is reality truth? But what is reality? How much can we see? What can we know?
Something that truth, meaning and values all have in common is that they are hidden from view. Sometimes a small window reveals that there is a whole lot more there.
Frankl quoted Goethe who said “If we take people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat them as if they were what they ought to be, we help them to become what they are capable of becoming.”
What is the truth? Is it who the person is now or who he has the potential to become? We create reality by seeing it in potential first.
In Jewish sources there is a concept of being me’urav im ha’briyot (taking on a perspective of engagement with the other). In the context of this statement there is a discussion about truth. Is it false to sing the bride’s praises in front of the groom if we see something not so pretty in her? It’s not falsehood. To the groom she is beautiful and truth in this case is what is true for him.
It’s related that when the Biblical Aaron saw two people arguing he would go to one and say “Your friend is so sorry about what he did and loves you and wants to make up.” He would say the same thing to the other one. In the end they resolved their differences and were on speaking terms again. Was he speaking the truth? Not exactly, but…
…truth is how the world looks from a perspective outside our own and truth is a future potential and truth resides at a deeper level of consciousness. Truth is hidden.
Yet truth “springs from the earth.”
Truth comes to light in the process of acting upon and actualizing the potential that we see – like seeing a “weak” student’s strengths, engaging with another person’s experience of life or catching a glimpse of people’s basic love for one another that supersedes their argument. In the words of Antoine de Saint-Exupery “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
To be continued…