Truth and the Dog

What is truth? In college, I learned how everyone’s truth is different. A poem would be presented to the class, and we would go around the room and ask people what they thought the poem meant. Everyone had a different answer. And none of these answers were right or wrong, they were simply true to whoever was perceiving the poem. None of us could ever know what the poet meant when they wrote it, and if the poet was writing in spirit they wouldn’t know either.

The poem simply reveals itself to us and then we interpret it through our own lens. And that’s life. Our experience, reality, the universe… it reveals itself to us and then we interpret it through our unique lens. And nobody’s interpretation of this is better or worse than any other, and no interpretation is right or wrong. If it’s truly how we interpret the experience, that’s how it is. Might not be the same for me, but that’s fine. If we all saw things the same way, life would be pretty boring.

Differentiation is interesting. It makes conversation interesting if you don’t attach yourself to your interpretation by trying to prove it’s right. It’s much more interesting to talk to someone who says, “tell me about your experience,” than someone who thinks “this is how it is and if you see it differently you’re wrong.”

Sadly, many of us live in a state of attachment. We constantly attach ourselves to our interpretation of reality and then we go to war with other people in order to prove our interpretation is important, correct, or better than someone else’s.

But it’s not important. It doesn’t mean anything more than what it is. It’s just your interpretation. Eight billion other people have their interpretation. Big whoop. You dropped your snack wrapper. Pick it up. Get on with it like the rest of us.

Imagine a cloudy evening in your neighborhood. The sun is setting, and the light is creeping between the spaces in the sky. A dog is barking in the distance and the faint sound of children playing bounces of the fences. The smell of fresh rain rises off the pavement and tickles your touchy nostrils. You scan the scorching sky of oranges, pinks, and blues, when suddenly… you see a rainbow in the distance.

You look down at your dog and say “wow buddy, look at that! It’s a rainbow, isn’t it beautiful!?”

And the dog says, “I don’t see anything, what are you talking about?” (The dog can talk in this scenario, just go with it.) Confused, the dog says “what do you mean, there’s nothing there. It’s just the sky.”

And you say, “no no no it’s clear as can be, it’s a rainbow!”

He says, “stop messing with me, this isn’t funny.”

“Stop messing with me! It’s right there!” you retort. You think this dog has to be crazy, so you say, “let’s get someone else to come over and prove who’s right.”

The dog looks you up and down, then replies… “Well, is it going to be a person or a dog?”

- Butternut Billycream

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