Dispel

I started this life utterly ignorant, naïve, and gullible. I was faithful, innocent, and gave the benefit of the doubt. This, naturally, was taken advantage of from the beginning by those of all ages. Pranks and hoaxes, fairytales and 'white lies' - I was being taught that no one was to be trusted, people enjoy (and frequently engage in) deceiving others, that people defined the 'truth' as whatever they wanted it to be. "Beliefs, experiences, thoughts, feeling are all equally real and indisputible." Easy to dismiss criticisms when the truth is what you make it.

So, it was those who deceived me, pranked me, lied to me, dismissed my curiosity and scepticisms: it was those people in my life who set me on the hyper-rational, hyper-corrective, hyper-critical path on which I found myself to be prolific. Combined with various preëxisting affinities, I've come to focus my life on discerning truth, even to my own detriment.

What purpose does deception serve others, but to teach them how easily they are deceived? I was taught the mind is fallible, that experiences are only vaguely real, that one's view at one time may fail to match one's view at another, that truth is found outside of ourselves, our lenses, our sense of self. Objective truth simply is, regardless of beliefs, thoughts, feelings, experiences. We can only know subjective truth from within, which is honesty, but honesty is not the same as fact. It is up to us to seek objective truth, always, by travelling outside of ourselves.

Objective truth is a resource we cannot manufacture. It is a resource we desperately need in order to prosper, to grow and progress both as individuals and a collective. Objective truth requires that one acknowledges their own fallibility, that one may change their beliefs when their beliefs no longer fit the evidence.