What is Truth?

“And the lonely voice of youth cries, ‘what is truth?'”

Truth is the most important thing an individual can strive after in their lifetime. This statement may not seem apparent at first. Many of you will be thinking, “no what about…..” Let me clarify first and you will see that, for the most part, all of those things that you can think of are results of striving after truth.

Truth seems to come in two forms. At least by modern definition it does. One is the changing fluid truth often called subjective. These truths often change based on the situation. For example, “don’t lie”. Well, what about situations like during the holocaust were lying actually saved countless innocent lives by hiding to location of many of those persecuted during that time? Suddenly that truth becomes….sticky.

The other is the unassailable truth. The one that doesn’t change. The one that you can stand on in any situation. If I poke myself hard enough in the eye it will hurt. This doesn’t change. If I am able to poke myself than presumably I am alive and thus I can feel my eye. Even if I am under the influence of some sort of pain deadening drug, when that wears off I will feel it if I poke hard enough to damage something.If I am suffering from leprosy and it is effecting my eyes such that poking myself there no matter how hard won’t hurt, well, it’s unlikely that I am still alive and am thus unable to poke myself. This is the type of truth that I am going to be referring to from this point out.

As we grow and mature one of our tasks as human beings is to find our identity, our place in society and existence in general. This journey is a searching for those unassailable truth. Truths that answer questions like; “why am I here?”, “why are we here?”, What should I do with myself.” In fact these truths that we find define every action we will take from that point on. The problem that often occurs is that people, after reaching a certain point and creating their identity, will stop.

Instead of constantly testing those truth to make sure they are, in fact, unassailable, they stagnate. Instead of constantly searching for more truths in this multifaceted existence we call life. They close their eyes. Rather than growing as a person they rot.

If these truths, those regarding our nature as humans, the origin of the universe and life, our purpose (if any), remain untested how can we know we are doing what is…right?