Truth ...

November 15, 2009

"You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free." ...

The original author of those familiar words should have gone on to say that truth could come very close to killing you before freedom kicked in.

Aldous Huxley wrote a controversial book in 1930. Six years before I was born. The title was, "Brave New World." It was banned when I was a teenager, which meant my friends and I got our hot little hands on a dog-eared, black market copy as quickly as possible, and read every word while hiding in the hay loft. Most of it went right over my head.

I read "Brave New World" again after I was grown up. (Was I ever grown up?) (Am I grown up now?) ... and I was sickened and disgusted at the man's vision of cranking out genetically altered humans, assembly-line style.

One of Huxley's quotes was, "you shall know the truth and the truth will drive you mad." I've often wondered if he meant mad as in angry, or mad as in insane ...

Maybe he meant both.

I refuse to believe in anger and insanity. I choose, instead, to believe that truth brings freedom to stop struggling. Freedom to rest. Freedom to live in peace.

Truth appears in different ways. Sometimes, it comes to us like a SWAT team kicking down a door. Ready or not, truth rushes full strength into our guts. Other times it drifts slowly into our consciousness like air seeping through cracks around the window, until suddenly, when we least expect it, a fully developed truth stands before us, and can no longer be denied.

Before our lives on earth are over, each of us will be forced to recognize many truths ... either all at once or in small installments. If it's a good truth we can celebrate it. If it's a terrible truth we must face it, survive it, learn from it ... then lay it aside gently and walk away without looking back.

"We shall know the truth and the truth shall set us free.."