We live in a world that wants there to only be one truth.
A world that demands you’re either liberal or conservative.
For us or against us.
A world of black and white.
One that demands we conform to a truth it sets for us, instead of the truth we find in ourselves.
And that’s the problem, then, isn’t it?
That when the world around us, a world that is flawed, hollow, confused, demands we conform to the polarities it has set for us.
The deepest truth Judaism ever taught is that there can be multiple points of view and they can all be valid.
Even more important, a person can possess multiple truths within themselves, truths that may seem contradictory.
A person can believe in peace, but demand war.
A person can disagree with someone, but still respect them, still treat that someone like the glorious, perfect creation he is.
If only we realized that truth isn’t a flat, two-dimensional existence.
But rather a three-dimensional, complex, layered reality.
If only a person could be conservative but not agree with everything Bill O’Reilly says.
If only a person could be liberal but still be tolerant of those he disagrees with.
Recently, a person wondered how I could write a post about moments in my life that were clearly traumatic and argue that they were good moments.
She believed that I was in denial, that I hadn’t yet mourned these shocking, painful, disturbing moments.
To her, I say that two truths can exist within a person at once.
A person can acknowledge and mourn trauma, see it as the negative reality it is. Accept all the pain that comes with that acknowledgement, and work steadily to deal with it.
And that same person can then take that moment and turn it into the biggest positive they’ve experienced in their life.
In fact, I would argue that that person has to do that.
Because if our life is dominated by single truths, by blacks and whites, with no gray and no color, and no contradictions…
Then our lives become the kind of thing we can all just watch on O’Reilly. It can just be transmitted into a crappy sitcom, and we can all just decay like the rest of the world that thinks like that, not living a life that’s rich, that’s true, that’s deep.
Let go of duality. Accept plurality. Your soul is begging for it.
Leave a Reply