Truth, Like Love

I used to get confused when some voice-- that of a real person I knew, that of some academic I was reading, that of the Gospels, or that of my paintings talking back at me late nights in the studio-- would encourage me to follow my truth. That in so doing I would be creating and upholding a working ethical code.

What is this truth, and how do I find it? I was out to get summa that.

If I'd spent more time pondering Rilke, I might've felt less compulsion for a road map to truth: "don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer" (Letters to a Young Poet, edition and page currently unknown).

Living the questions does not mean waiting. It means creating discomfort in your life. It means taking risks. It means enjoying dynamism.

Truth is like love (and, I want to add, chance in backgammon) in that you are capable of dealing with it inasmuch as you are [self-caring and] open to it. It knocks at your gate.

I might've just figured this out today:

1. An idea takes hold of you.
2. It persists.
3. You pursue.

There's more: sometimes you have to be courageous to take up the truth because sometimes it cuts against the grain of your daily life, of your politics, of your religious upbringing, of your social networking. 

I imagine it's worse if you don't heed the truth, but I can't be sure. I imagine that polite knock at the gate eventually becomes a battering ram that can't be ignored. And suddenly, in denying truth, you create a terrifying thing in your relationship to truth. Maybe when the gates crash down around you, you feel like you've failed, but really, in the words of J.K. Rowling (Harvard commencement speech 2008), you've just "stripped away the inessential". I know a little about this.

When something persists in your life, don't try to run right away. Take a good, hard look at it. It might be your truth, and you may have to get in that.