Without Echoes
Truth is like all fine things in life - it’s nuanced, it changes when it’s presented in different circumstances, when it’s filtered through individual experience it becomes infinitely individual. That’s right. Truth is individual. Even the so-called “universal truths.” When they truly move through one of us, they become unique. That’s not to say that truths are no longer universal, they just become more true when expressed by the individual.
It’s simply that truth resists our desire to hand it down or receive it like a relic or codified universal principle. Another way of saying this is that when we adopt another’s beliefs or truths without testing them in our lives, running them through the matrix of our experience, our individuality is sacrificed, and our freedom becomes an illusion.
We all want to say important sounding things, but if we simply repeat what we’ve heard, our freedom is at stake, and, if we do this enough - if we parrot - we will truly lose our individuality, our freedom. Insights, like experience, are deeply personal; they are woven from the unique threads of each of our lives, our subjectivity, and our will. We simply cannot take another person’s thoughts and realizations, no matter how profound, and simply transplant them wholesale into our mind without them (and us!) losing vitality.
Instead, ideas should be explored and tested. We should let them rub against the grain of our individual experiences. When we find a thought outside of our self that is so grounded and real, like an object or relic, it’s not meant to be collected and put on a shelf; it should be fluid, born new, and refreshed in each encounter. Truth, the real truth - that which is individual - isn’t fixed. It can’t be pinned and placed and found again. It is a continual process of inquiry. And my conclusion from this inquiry is that growth is not an inheritance, but an emergence - a path that is as distinct as our individuality, forged through our doubt, discovery, and subconscious choice to be ourselves.
