Speak Your Truth

“Speak Your Truth,” I used to despise that phrase. To me, it sounded like a blanket approval of people’s opinions. “I don’t care about differing views or so-called scientific evidence, it’s MY truth.”  I don’t like that. In my opinion, people’s opinions vary greatly in quality. Many opinions I run into are at best boring. It goes downhill from there.

So. Many. Opinions. (mine included)

Can’t we all just collectively decide to chill out about opinions? You like shopping at Whole Foods, I like shopping at Walmart (and also complaining about the blind privilege of people who exclusively shop at Whole Foods). It’s fine. I go to Whole Foods on occasion. I love Trader Joes. But I also love shopping among people who live in a completely different economic strata than at Whole Foods. It reminds me that humanity is diverse, that everyone is spending hard-earned dollars, and that marketing is bullshit.

Anywho. I currently don’t mind the phrase, “Speak Your Truth.” Yes, I changed my mind about it. My reason is primarily pragmatic in nature. I don’t mind the phrase largely because there is no way to speak anything else. The clue is in the phrase. TRUTH is the noun. MY is the adjective. I am drawn in by the qualifier. It’s not THE truth. It’s MY truth.

So if I edit my speech because I’m afraid of what other people will think of my raw perspective, that is still “my truth.” It’s a truth of fear and restriction. It’s my truth because it reveals what is really happening inside of me - even if I’m the only one who knows about the edits.

If I said something in a sermon years ago that I have now changed my mind about (which has happened several times), then I can relax. It happens. I used to carry shame about the things I asserted in my youth. I struggled with accepting that I believed something that I no longer agreed with. Now I see that as natural evolution. In the New Testament, St. Paul once said to the Corinthian church, “When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.” Life progresses. Circumstances change. We change.

Do I believe there is such a thing as “THE” truth? I do. The problem is that I can’t fully see it. In the philosophical branch of epistemology (how we know things), I resonate with the idea of critical realism. It’s pretty heady as it tries to distinguish the difference between the REAL world and the OBSERVABLE world. If I had to boil it down, I’d say that we can see glimmers of THE truth, but we don’t see it clearly. As humans, we are naturally hindered by the limitations of personal perspective. My way of seeing things is highly influenced by my personality, my trauma, my beliefs, and my desires. Whatever I see is part truth and part me. And in my opinion, it’s mostly me. I think St. Paul said it better, “we see through a glass darkly” (also to the Corinthians, apparently they got all the good nuggets).

What I’m saying is this: please, speak your truth. Just remember that your truth does not equal the truth. And that’s okay. No one’s truth equals the truth. Our humanness requires imperfection. I’ll say it again differently: we are supposed to get it “wrong” at times. There is no such thing as arriving in this dimension of reality. As hard as Wesleyan purists may argue, perfection is an illusion (they call it holiness). It’s a myth. As far as I’m concerned, God’s design of the human experience intentionally includes mistakes and growth.

So speak it. Express your words. Own it. And then let it go. Because odds are your future self won’t agree with you anyways.

Reflection: Can you speak your truth knowing that it is likely not the truth?