Truth and Lies by Gillian

My mother had a saying.
Well, my mother was a constant fountain of sayings, but she had a favorite one about lies.
A truth that’s told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.
When I was little I thought these, and those of all her endless other aphorisms, were words of her own wisdom but later of course I discovered otherwise; these particular words were originated by the poet, William Blake.

Anyway, I grew up with something of an ambivalent attitude to truth and lies.
I learned, rather, that truth is something to be approached with some caution and used judiciously; the same can be said of lies.
Nothing in my life has ever caused me to change that attitude.
I was delighted when I found, recently, that J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame agrees. She says,
‘The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should be treated with caution.’


The poet John Keats told us that truth is beauty and beauty truth.
Sadly, there is frequently nothing uglier than the truth.
Mahatma Gandhi said,
‘Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.’
Really?
It is what is true for me. It is what I believe or perceive to be the truth.
Another’s truth may be very different, just as our realities differ.

But I am talking of subjective truth, I hear you say: truth that is based on individual sentiment.
Gay parents are every bit as good as straight parents might be my truth whereas others may sincerely believe the opposite to be true.
What about solid factual truth?
The world is round. Yes, most of us accept that, but there are still those 3000 members of the Flat Earth Society who do not. The web page for this group proclaims proudly to have been deprogramming the masses since 1547. And before Columbus tossed confusion into the ring, many of us would have believed the earth to be flat.
Factual truths change.
Both sides of the current Global Climate Change debate avidly produce facts to defend their ‘truth.’
Before our very eyes endlessly we have politicians showering us and each other with facts which handily disprove those offered by another.
The British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli referenced three types of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
How right he was!
There is, as Maya Angelou puts it, ‘a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.’
How right she is!

Thomas Jefferson, another great espouser of truth, said that truth can stand by itself, which I would have to question, and, ‘There is not a truth existing which I fear.’
I find many truths, or that which I believe to be true, quite terrifying.
A million in Rwanda, brutally murdered by their fellow beings? Maybe the number is not a complete truth, perhaps it was a mere 900,000 and someone rounded up, but I believe in the basic truth of the report.
How fearful is that? Climate change, speeding ahead and leaving us watching with our mouths agape?

Both truth and lies are murky, unstable things.

I rarely proclaim to have absolute knowledge of truth, and occasionally I lie, but I flatter myself that in all I have the very best of intentions

That’s about as good as I can get.

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.