InkStains: Day 188

I have a key.

The key unlocks a secret.

The secret reveals a truth.

I’m not always sure our society is ready for truth. Too many perception filters in the way. Too many divergent views on what may constitute a truth.

So I don’t reveal the truth.

I don’t unlock the secret.

I don’t use the key.

I know a woman in New Orleans. She’s younger than me and makes a living serving bourbon.

She has a key, too.

Her keys unlocks a secret.

Her secrets reveals a truth.

I know a man in San Francisco. He lost his job and sold his furniture and left the east coast.

He also has a key.

His key also unlocks a secret.

His secret reveals a truth.

There’s a college kid in Indiana. I don’t know this person. I don’t know if this person has a part time job or a scholarship or a hundred thousand dollars in student loans.

This person has a key.

Just like everyone else.

Individually, we hid our keys, we keep our secrets locked, we fail to see the bigger truths. We get petty and ridiculous. We get stupid and short-sighted and misguided. We give away our thinking cells so someone else can fill our mouths with talking points we can echo deafly to each other, in opposition or in support, as though we might actually accomplish something.

We keep our truths away from everyone else and we keep them away from ourselves. Because the sad truth about our personal truths is this: they are incomplete. And therefore they are not the miraculous calculation that will resolve all the mysteries of the universe. Our truths, by themselves, are miniscule and maybe pose more questions than they answer. Some truths seem to contradict other truths — or at least beliefs.

Individually, on their own, our truths are insignificant.

This is why we keep them in shadow, under locks, behind the masks we wear.

Perhaps another truth, someone else’s truth, might fit nicely with ours and begin to make sense; and someone else’s truth might add more clarity.

But how could we know, when that other person’s truth is a secret locked away as tightly as our own?

Imagine if we unlocked seven billion truths all at once. What kind of world would we live in then?