Many truths
Much of my responsibility as an adult who is dependent on and responsible to all those who lives I directly ad n indirectly touch is to examine those “truth” which I hold as self-evident. For better or worse I began to internalize truths about myself, others and the entire universe as a young child. Often these truth were adopted from my parents and other adults who had adopted them from their r and other teachers. Many, if not most, of these “truths” had not been arrived at via the rigors of scientific studies which started with the null hypotheses. Some of these truth I deduced from my observations as a very young child. I am not sure how old I was when on our street in Chicago I noticed a man had fallen down. Apparently I decided or someone told me he was drunk. We (my mother, sister and I ) walked around the man. Also in my memory some remark was made about the fact that he was an African American. Young children use their limited knowledge to translate what they “hear” adults such as parents saying. Frequently they do not fact check to see if that is what their parents intended for them to hear or see. Sometimes we parents give contradictory or confusing truths to our children. My mother, for example, in my memory said, “Those people are okay as long as they stay on their side of the tracks. I am not prejudiced about those people.” That is very confusing, especially when one lives in a world which clearly values some people and devalues others. I did “hear” from somewhere that racism was bad and when I used racism to get me out of trouble at age 5 I felt immediately guilty and carried that guilt with me well into my 5th decade.
The point is, however, if we want to be our best selves as adults, we need to systematically fact check every “truth” we have learned about ourselves, each other and the rest of the world. We need to continue to be wary of any information we hear and do our best to look for evidence to prove or disprove its validity. Fortunately there are professionals who do fact check some of the news including what politicians say. Yet as humans we often tend to looks for “facts” which validate what we already believe. It behooves us to constantly question our willingness to consider data which may conflict what we want to believe or what we are most comfortable believing.
The older I get the fewer facts I know. I do often know what my very selective and flawed memory tells me. The “truth” is that my memory tells me X. There may as many versions of X as there were observers of X.
I often know I want to believe, for example, that humans are basically good if their brain is functioning as it was intended to function; that us humans will naturally help each other if we have not been taught to believe that some are not deserving of help. It is also my experience that us humans can easily be seduced by offers of people, places and things which offer a temporary high. We have to be able to carefully examine the price of a temporarh high for self and others. Very often a temporary is not worth the price.
Having said all this, as I age, I have found that there are a few facts which I have yet to disprove. These are:
I am sure most readers can add to this list, What I hope readers will take from this blog is the reminder that “TRUTH” is very elusive and relative. We all need to be very cautious about mistaking our truth for the truth.
Written April 17, 2020
Jimmy F Pickett
coachpickett, LPC, AADC
Much of my responsibility as an adult who is dependent on and responsible to all those who lives I directly ad n indirectly touch is to examine those “truth” which I hold as self-evident. For better or worse I began to internalize truths about myself, others and the entire universe as a young child. Often these truth were adopted from my parents and other adults who had adopted them from their r and other teachers. Many, if not most, of these “truths” had not been arrived at via the rigors of scientific studies which started with the null hypotheses. Some of these truth I deduced from my observations as a very young child. I am not sure how old I was when on our street in Chicago I noticed a man had fallen down. Apparently I decided or someone told me he was drunk. We (my mother, sister and I ) walked around the man. Also in my memory some remark was made about the fact that he was an African American. Young children use their limited knowledge to translate what they “hear” adults such as parents saying. Frequently they do not fact check to see if that is what their parents intended for them to hear or see. Sometimes we parents give contradictory or confusing truths to our children. My mother, for example, in my memory said, “Those people are okay as long as they stay on their side of the tracks. I am not prejudiced about those people.” That is very confusing, especially when one lives in a world which clearly values some people and devalues others. I did “hear” from somewhere that racism was bad and when I used racism to get me out of trouble at age 5 I felt immediately guilty and carried that guilt with me well into my 5th decade.
The point is, however, if we want to be our best selves as adults, we need to systematically fact check every “truth” we have learned about ourselves, each other and the rest of the world. We need to continue to be wary of any information we hear and do our best to look for evidence to prove or disprove its validity. Fortunately there are professionals who do fact check some of the news including what politicians say. Yet as humans we often tend to looks for “facts” which validate what we already believe. It behooves us to constantly question our willingness to consider data which may conflict what we want to believe or what we are most comfortable believing.
The older I get the fewer facts I know. I do often know what my very selective and flawed memory tells me. The “truth” is that my memory tells me X. There may as many versions of X as there were observers of X.
I often know I want to believe, for example, that humans are basically good if their brain is functioning as it was intended to function; that us humans will naturally help each other if we have not been taught to believe that some are not deserving of help. It is also my experience that us humans can easily be seduced by offers of people, places and things which offer a temporary high. We have to be able to carefully examine the price of a temporarh high for self and others. Very often a temporary is not worth the price.
Having said all this, as I age, I have found that there are a few facts which I have yet to disprove. These are:
- If I am intentional about daily health care – emotional, physical, spiritual and nutritional – I feel and function better.
- Love is more effective than hate, anger or punishment.
- This life journey is very brief.
- I am powerless over people, places and things.
- Mother nature is in charge although we can have a negative effect on how it functioning, i. e. climate.
- The unexamined life is not worth living.
- It only takes 10 minutes to travel from age 1 to 100.
- I hear, see, smell and taste with my brain. This is where we interpret incoming stimuli.
- My mind creates my reality and, if not careful, I mistake it for external or universal reality.
I am sure most readers can add to this list, What I hope readers will take from this blog is the reminder that “TRUTH” is very elusive and relative. We all need to be very cautious about mistaking our truth for the truth.
Written April 17, 2020
Jimmy F Pickett
coachpickett, LPC, AADC
RSS Feed