I was checking my phone this week and I got an email reminding me about an upcoming reception/awards announcement. I paused. Wait. What? Was I in that show? Oh no. I do remember planning to deliver two sculptures to that exhibit. Did I forget? That would be ridiculously unprofessional. Or did I deliver them and forget the exhibit? Is that worse? Didn’t I just write a blog post about not being in a show? Was I wrong?
A while later I sat down at my computer and searched my emails. There it was, back in July. Apparently I did deliver them, though, I honestly have no recollection of that. As a visual person with a busy mind, this happens sometimes. If I have a lot of things going on, I’m lucky to remember all the things I have to do in a day and if a day is busy and nothing freakish or visually interesting stands out that day, it’s possible I will stop on my way to cross country practice in the middle of summer, drop off a couple of small sculptures in a rush and then continue on to practice, run 3-5 miles, drive home, work on preparing for upcoming classes, spend time on a drawing, plan two trips to Chapel Hill, take down a solo exhibit in Summerville and totally forget about dropping off the two small sculptures. For the record, Violet had hip surgery somewhere in there too. (Yes, the little blue sculpture in the poster and fliers for the exhibit is mine, making it even more terrible that I forgot.)
But I didn’t sit down to write about forgetting things today. I’m here because I was thinking about truth.
When I was a sophomore in college, I knew the truth. I used to walk by this building with a big cornerstone with the inscription “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free”. I knew this was from John 8:32 in the Bible because I was a good little church boy who grew up being told what the truth was. Specifically, I was told that my religion had the real truth and that no other religion did. This implied that truth existed, it could be found by humans and that I had found it. Just think about that. Me, a country guy from South Carolina. I found the Universal Truth before I even turned 18.
This made being sure of everything easy. Every argument or discussion could be boiled down to black or white, good or evil, right or wrong. And since I knew the truth, I always knew where I stood. However, as time went on and life gave me more and more experiences, I found it more and more difficult to break everything down into black and white, good or evil, right or wrong. (Writer’s note: I use “black or white” as it was used in religious jargon. I was taught that everything was black or white in terms of morality or Biblical truth. There were no “gray areas”. Gray areas suggested that truth may not really exist. Just making sure this is not interpreted as any sort of racial terminology. Some of those people were quite racist too, but they used different jargon for that.) My religious upbringing had prepared me for this. I was taught, mostly indirectly, that education was tied to “liberal” thoughts and that I would need to be on guard in college and grad school or I could be infected with a “thinking too much disease”. I might start questioning things that shouldn’t be questioned. I might have my faith shaken off its foundation.
I’ll save you all the stories but here’s the spoiler: I did start questioning everything and while my faith in God was never shaken off its foundation, my faith in the “people of God” was. Fast forward to this week when political faces on screens open a meeting by invoking the name of God in prayer and then talk about the importance of killing, the need to remove all empathy and how only a select few are fit to do all that killing and unempathetic thinking. Churches I’ve attended refuse to use their own holy book to condemn the court recorded activities of certain people in power because they think they can use those people to get the Ten Commandments posted in schools or abortions made illegal.
Dang, we got in the deep water fast, didn’t we? Oops.
We’ve lived in a social climate for a decade or two now where truth depends on opinion. Leaders and respected adults have told us what was “true” without presenting any evidence to support their claims. Worse, we’ve allowed them to do so without question or any investigation. We’ve just nodded and voted and moved on. With the proliferation of Facebook, “fake news” and now AI, who even knows what truth is anymore? Doesn’t truth now depend on your belief system, your politics or your own personal to-do list? Forget the facts, if something feels true these days, it’s truth.
So I’m on my computer, looking at old emails and I remember that what I wrote here on Sep 22 was not actually true. I sent myself into a black hole of self-doubt and mental torment because I wasn’t in any exhibits and it wasn’t even true. What I thought was true in my head, was not, in fact, supported by evidence. I’m over here whining about not having art out in the world and my two sweet little sculptures are sitting under bright lights, making people smile and wondering how I could forget about them.
Y’all know I try to keep a record of the exhibits and opportunities I get accepted into and rejected from. I started that because it always felt like I was getting rejected. It was easy to remember the pain of not getting into that exhibit, but so easy to forget getting into that other one. I remember the exact wording of the rejection letter from that great juror but I forgot the award I won. I felt like a failure because I couldn’t remember succeeding. I did not “know” the truth and I wasn’t free.
I’m not just rambling. This smaller scale story of not being able to find the truth is directly related to that larger scale story of the human race not being able to discern truth. When we lose the ability to know what truth is in the minutia of our daily lives, it’s easier for us to lose a grip on what truth is on a larger scale.
I believe you find truth through questions. Any religion, group or individual who tells you to not ask questions is a religion, group or individual wanting to have complete control over you. They know you find truth through questions and they don’t want you to find truth.
And when your religious knee jerks and you want to disagree with me, I’ll ask that you pause and think about the questions asked in your holy text. Just one example from my own religious upbringing, one of Jesus’ favorite things to do was to answer a question with a question. Remember that bracelet you wore 10 years ago? What would Jesus do? He would ask a question. Thinking isn’t a sin. It’s how you find truth.
I’m lucky I get to teach critical thinking skills on a daily basis at my job. In order to critique a work of art, you have to be able to isolate feelings and emotions from the conversation. You have to look carefully at the visual evidence present and be able to fully analyze that evidence. Then you put all that information together and make judgments based on the evidence. You’re asking questions and finding answers based on evidence. This brings you to the truth.
Many of us are at the point where we just want to let Google do our thinking for us so we can get back to watching our Tiktoks. Maybe we just want to react to our emotions and make choices based on how we feel rather than based on evidence. But, feelings aren’t truth.
Everyone gets discouraged from time to time but we have to remember that our feelings aren’t truth. When our feelings don’t match up with reality, we lose truth in all the small ways and in all the big ways.
