Hemingway once said that it was difficult, if not impossible, to say or write one true thing. With the varying degrees of perception, belief, reality, and falsehood; it’s no surprise that he would feel that way.
And to expand upon that problem a little further, we get in just as much trouble in the ways that we speak. Language as much a barrier to our understanding as our preconceived notions of the world.
We all have our blinders and our bias. We have our perceptions and beliefs, and then, somewhere in the middle lies reality. How does a person honestly, truthfully, and without bias, state the truth?
It is said that the one true and “pure” langauge that exists is math, but how does that help your average person on the street who is trying to communicate their needs?
I was asked, yesterday, what my hitchhiking accomplished for me. There was no short and honest answer. In the end, sometimes we just do things because we feel that we must. It doesn’t have to make sense, and a lot of times, it never ever makes sense.
Am I better person for having undertaken that journey? Absolutely. Can I articulate all the reasons why? Of course not. I’m just as biased about my own journey as someone would be about stating the stupidity of it.
There lies the rub. I would say that my journey allowed me to become a better person. An outside person would state that it simply made me irresponsible. The reality probably lies somewhere in between, but reality itself is subjective, just as much as the bias.
And that applies to damn near anything you will ever talk to anyone about today. You state opinion X. They state opinion Y. Reality is T. Reality for someone with a slightly different bias would be U. And so on.
The same could be said for failed relationships or divorce. I would unequivocally say that I was victimized in both of my divorces. I was cheated on by each person. Their perception of reality may be that I wasn’t a good enough person, and so, it was okay for them to do that.
I’m not saying that that is the truth (though, that was the impression that I received in each discussion), but it helps to put a spin on the way that we hear things. There are the things we want to hear. The things we can’t hear. And the things that we’d like to hear, but can never internalize.
With all these barriers and problems, it’s amazing that as a species, we haven’t just murdered everyone off by now.