Here’s an old Grasshopper Note I found Lying around:

“How Useful is Your Lie?”

What do you know for sure that you’re not so sure about? Is there something you spout as “Truth” that you may be unknowingly lying about? Perhaps it’s time to separate truth from usefulness.

Let’s face it; most of our beliefs are a bunch of half-truths. That’s another way of saying that just because we believe something doesn’t make it true. Reminds me of a story . . .

My mother used to call visible pollen floating through the air “Money feathers.” Her claim was that if you grab it out of the air and put it into your pocket, you would come into money.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I still do that. I will also admit that after decades of doing this, I haven’t come into any windfalls. I no longer believe I’m going to come into money with this practice, but it is useful. I get to remember my mother every time I do it.

The question becomes: How useful is your truth? Are you using it as a wall of separation between you and others who don’t believe what you do? That’s not very useful. For example, do you have the one “true” religion? That creates a wall of exclusion between you and others who have their own religious truth.

The message here isn’t about religion; it’s about usefulness. How useful is your truth if you are alienating people with it even though you can’t validate it?

It’s time to recognize that our truths are half-truths. As The Grasshopper reminded us in the past: “Truth has no opposite.” If someone has an opposing truth, neither one of you has the real thing.

How many times have you heard, “If you put your mind to it, anything is possible”? There is too much evidence on the other side of that assertion (truth) that makes it a lie. But what if you believe that lie and succeed? Then your truth is useful.

More often it would be useful to hear people say, “Here’s what worked for me.” They aren’t wrapping it in the cloak of truth; they are just relating their experience. They aren’t saying, “This is the truth”; they are communicating, “This is what I did” minus the lecture about it being the truth.

Perhaps it’s time to inspect your truths and find the ones that are useful and retire the ones that only cause conflict. Here’s a hint that your truth is a lie: Anytime you hear you or someone else start a sentence with, “I’m a firm believer that such and such is the truth,” it’s a pretty sure bet that you are only hearing their version of the truth, not the truth itself.

From my vantage point, the only thing I can claim as truth is reality. Reality has no opposite. Learning to respond to reality rather than create alternate ones in our mind is one of the most useful things we can do, even though I can’t claim that what I just said is true.

All the best,

John