Write the
truest sentence that you know.
-Hemingway
Whether
it is in conversation with yourself, your family, a friend, or a co-worker, let
your next sentence be true. In other words, demand the truth of yourself. This
presupposes, of course, that you know
the truth of yourself.
What
am I truly feeling or thinking? What
do I actually believe, and why? Not what am I supposed to be feeling, thinking or believing but what is the truth
of me, what is the truth to me? Yes, yes, when we speak our truth we want to be
appropriate and wise. However, how often
do we use these sentiments to actually bleed the substance of our truth from
our sentences and, consequently, from our souls?
How
can we insist upon “the truest sentence” from others, if we ourselves prefer
comforting lies that shelter us from disturbing facts, unsetting realities, and
soul-rattling truths? “This is what I believe (not), how I feel (nope), what is
true for me (hope they bought that),” is a sentence that gives others
permission to lie to you and robs you of the authority of integrity while
questioning their sentences.
Thinking
With Your Own Mind
It
seems to me that many people choose to allow others to think through their
brains and speak through their mouths. They are talking heads with talking
points and muted souls, not individuals with their own thoughts and feelings.
When asked a question the default position is to repeat the beliefs of the
tribes to which they belong: political tribes, religious tribes, social tribes,
ideological tribes, etc.
Before
you speak, ask yourself: do my words have any correlation to the truth of
things as I view them? Have I dug deeply enough into my mind and heart to know
what is actually there? When it comes to my beliefs, am I merely parroting
others, repeating the thoughts of those I respect or fear, or am I expressing
the results of my own studies and deliberations?
I
would rather discover I was wrong about the “truth” of my beliefs and ideas
than mindlessly echoing what turned out to be true. I would rather be an honest
heretic than mindlessly orthodox. (And religions are not the only institutions
with orthodoxies!) I would rather say, “I don’t know,” before trafficking in
stolen goods—pretending my words and thoughts were actually mine, while knowing I had pilfered them
from someone else.
We
need to stop being robots, giving the controls over our brains, hearts, and
mouths to others. Stand up to the “intellectual terrorism of institutions”
(Voegelin) and tribes that demand we fall in line and repeat the company line,
“or else.”
Demand
the truth of yourself.
Come
to your own conclusions.
Have
your own voice.
Now.
Speak the truest sentence that you know.
Reprint: Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2012