Reflections on truth

People don’t like the truth

Because it is too hot

And too bright

Like an uncomfortable sun

That casts a long shadow.

Because it’s too messy,

it’s too complex, too hard to pin down,

and too hard to hold still.

It slips through your grip

like waterflowing through cracks,

finding every crevice.

Like floodwater, it makes its way into everything.

Truth moves. It’s both the river and the sea.

And like tears, it falls from the sky,

And like blood, it flows in the veins of the land.

It shifts from place to place,

from one perspective to another.

It passes under locked doors,

moves between borders and belief systems.

It changes depending on where you stand,

and who you are

when you’re looking.

You’ll find it lapping at distant shores;

Mediterranean beaches,

the Middle East,

the Emerald Isle,

African sunsets,

the fine sands of the Caribbean and Pacific islands,

and splashing also against the ice of Antarctica.

This is why humans prefer half-truths,

oversimplifications,

slogans and clickbait.

A cliché etched in stone feels dependable.

It stays put.

It promises certainty

in the face of chaos and mortality.

Faced with death,

with the discomfort of not knowing,

we choose the fairy tale over the truth.

We would rather chain ourselves to something fixed

than drift in an ocean of nuance

whose depth disappears into darkness,

lit only by flickering of light on waves.

It isn’t weakness that makes us crave certainty over truth.

It’s human.

It’s in our nature.

But water, like truth, can be frozen. 

This is also true. 

Such is its complexity.

Ice appears dependable, sure.

You can walk on it,

even skate across it with grace,

but only while the cold holds.

Add heat,

and it cracks beneath you.

Figures who trade in frozen slogans,

enriching themselves, 

By selling you a mirror of your own fear and bias,

Promising change with a head on a stick

Or a witch on a bonfire

Seek only to control the truth,

Not to reveal it.

Their slogans feel solid,

their certainties reassuring

but don’t mistake them for truth.

Frozen narratives always crack.

Truth refuses to remain stagnant forever.

Even at the molecular level,

ice is not still.

It is molecules dancing.

There is always some residual thermal energy.

And glaciers, too, eventually deform,

fracture beneath their own weight,

and crash back into the sea.

If truth is like water,

it cannot be frozen by fear permanently

or held obedient to external power indefinitely.

Eventually, it moves again.

Eventually, it finds its way back to freedom

Like a river to the sea.

And this brings me to the deeper point:

Freedom is the greater truth.

Freedom is fearless flow.

Faith in truth.

Faith in action.

Faith in movement.

Faith in nuance

without fear of complexity,

Nor fear of uncertainty,

Nor fear of irony, that great sword of truth

That conquers us all in the end reducing us to fools.

For even in contradiction, paradox is truth’s crowning jewel. 

But let’s not mistake this as an argument

for cynical relativism

or the selective post-modernism 

weaponised for control.

Truth isn’t something to be controlled

Or moulded to fit some agenda.

Truth is free!

Truth is something to be respected.

Yes, it’s something to be revered.

It’s something you can wrestle with within yourself, sure;

but it is not a fight you can win some grand victory over

without also losing 

some precious and pure piece of truth itself 

in the ruff and tumble.

But still, this does not support a case for the political spin of “alternative facts,”

and truth as garbage or spectacle. 

No.

Real truth is the powerful undercurrent;

the force that eventually sweeps such debris out to sea.

Facts matter to truth.

That is part of truth’s sting.

And part of its power.

And why the truth in the end

truly will set you free.