HONESTY MONTH: DAY 8: “Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”― Marcus Aurelius
I believe we must always remember that what we call “truth” is most of the time just an opinion. When others want to give me their “truth,” I am reluctant to hear it, unless they are someone whose opinions I really seek. That does not occur often.
Truth is very fluid and can be quite different from one person to the next. What you believe about an event or situation is colored by your experiences, your conditioning and your perceptions. Your truth is most likely going to differ from mine. We sit where we sit in life and gather our “truths” based on the seat we occupy.
This colors our perspective and because of that our perception. We must remember that it is often due to the story we are telling ourselves about events and situations, along with relationships with others that we form the opinions we do. So, truth is never a final statement of facts.
I love this quote. It is the first one I found when I was working through the perceptions I had to list in my first inventory.
That column about “what happened” or “what they did” in Step 4 is a tricky one. Every time I wrote out the “causes” of my resentments, I was taken to a new vantage point to see more of their perspective than the one I had held onto, sometimes for a good many years. That is the WHOLE point of the inventory. To see that what I hold onto has no real value in my life.
It is ALL just a story. Even when there are deep wrongs done to us, there is nothing to gain in holding this in our lives. It is done and over.
The only way we get to be free in this thing is to get real with it. To find those causes and conditions within OUR belief system that need to shift. I can’t live there any longer if I seek the real honesty of freedom and peace. And now I have that. I am eternally grateful.
Dolphin Hug 