Our Truths Are What We Choose To Believe In

There is a wide variety of truths, and most often, what we perceive as real and acceptable are based on our biases. Sometimes, we’d like to believe these things are imposed upon us, because submission gives a feeling of order and a sense of belongingness. But really, deep inside, most of the things we accept as true are the ones we want and choose to believe in.

It is true that we humans are driven by self-interest, whether good or bad. We are driven by reason and principles that are only true for as long as we consider them valid. We create discourses in our heads in order to arrive at compelling validations of the things we want to pursue and own. While we also create excuses for the things we want to escape, throw and disown, because we want people—we want things for as long as we find them desirable and then despise them the moment a tinge of dislike or a rage of aversion pushes us away. We do things as we like, we do things as we dislike, and create reasons that make our actions logically, morally, and emotionally acceptable. But truly, it is self-interest and not much else.

It is also true that the ability to feel is what makes us human. Feeling is the thin line that determines whether we are living to survive or we are living to be alive. Most often, we validate these feelings by attaching them to notions like “love” and “care”, hence creating meaning to our interests and making them true and acceptable. Also, the feelings attached to the nobility of what we call “love” allow for our irrational choices to become valid, because truly, love is the greatest force ever known next to fear. Feeling love is the one thing that goes beyond reason. Hence, everything we do for love becomes allowable and understandable to an extent. “The things we do for love,” they say.

It is also true that human’s capacity for emotions may be a trait of weakness. The very person or thing someone loves is the same key to a person’s downfall. Most of the time, when we love, we tend to be oblivious to the consequences of the things we do in pursuit of love. We fail to see things logically and reasonably, because we are “in love”. We even alter our standards of what’s allowable and what’s not because we love. Most tragically, we fail to protect ourselves, all because of love. All these things because we feel love. Love now becomes the centrepiece of our truths; love now transforms everything surrounding it as acceptable. Love now reforms our self-interests.

But how long do these truths, our emotions, the notion of love, and the act of caring last for us? Most often, as long as we want, as long as we deem them real, and as long as we consider them true. How long? No one knows really, not even you, because the truths we choose as acceptable are only acceptable for as long as we decide for them to be and for as long as we desire them to be. No one really knows until when. No one.