The truth is out there

Stories pack the newspaper, generate a buzz on the television, fill the airwaves. They are part of our conversations, our communications, our learnings, our lives. They are funny, sad, helpful, informative, disturbing. Sometimes they are the truth; sometimes they are lies.

"The truth will set you free" (The Bible) is often loosely translated as "... free to change the truth as you see fit or as serves your purpose". Some of us use a sprinkling of that in our stories; others use it as a licence to lie. Both teeter on the fence of precariousness.

Because we believe in the inherent goodness and honesty of people, we generally believe that what they are telling us and showing us is true. We laugh with them, sympathise with them, and retell their stories, often as if they were our own.

Unfortunately, sometimes what we are reading, seeing and hearing is not the truth, yet we believe that it is. And that is not completely our fault.

The truth is often cloaked, misconstrued, invented, altered for the benefit of the teller, expanded for the sake of a laugh, emoted to generate tears or to win support or an audience. Not technically lies, not actually the truth. And at the end of the day, we do feel somewhat cheated when we discover we've been had.

These days, with all the media available to us for the dissemination of stories, truthful or otherwise, it can be difficult to uncover the truth. And when we do, it is often hard to set things right. We don't like to think that we have been deceived, set up, lied to. We don't like to call the author out when we've exposed them. We don't have the time to pen letters to the editor every time we spot an error or a lie.

So, what can we do?

"The truth is out there" (X-Files), and it is up to us to be vigilant, to weigh the evidence at hand, to consider the facts, to understand the words, to look for hidden meanings and intent, to make up our own minds, to think before we believe - and to set the wrongs right, if we can. The truth should not be merely an accessory in our lives; bland acceptance should not be the norm.

In the words of Mark Twain, "If one is honest, there is no need to remember." I believe that applies to all aspects of our lives, whether there's a story to be had or not. And I, for one, have made that a truth I can live with.

What about you?