Truth is a disease.
I've always loved that metaphor. Truth, though we seek it in all our ways, it burns through us like acid joys and heartache. We crave it, and yet it never really helps, does it? Now don't get me wrong, there are some truths, some knowledge that does anything but burn, the cure for an illness, perhaps, but other truths are putrid, incurable.
Do friends really need to know what ails them isn't some curable anxiety about an exam or two, but rather this unalienable fear of being imperfect? Do I really need to face that? Who needs to know what goes on behind closed doors, who really needs to know anything? Should I stand here and expel all these truths, that there is no point in trying, no hope of moving on? That no matter where you go, it will always be the exact same as where you started? Does anyone want to know that, no matter how much we pretend it's perfect, no one will ever really care? That all your efforts are in vain?
Do we tell that old man at the temple, his eyes sparkling, his hand shaking as he reaches for his cane, that there is no hope?
I watched him, stared at him, and something broke. I started bawling, sobbing uncontrollably, and no one could figure out why. Maybe it was PMS. Maybe it's mortality, maybe it's my fear of death that made me see such sorrow in his eyes. But I could die any second now! These words I type could reach out and strangle me, but still, I write on. No, it is not death I fear, but rather the truth about death, the answers to all those questions on death. What happens after? Do I really want to know? Even if I did, by some miracle, find out some honest truths, would I want to tell him? To look him in his content little eyes, and tell him that maybe there is no hope, maybe there is nothing beyond what he sees here today… Could I do that? Would I do that? Tell him that, maybe all his prayers, all his faithful mutterings are for naught?
Does he want to know that truth?
Do I want to know that no matter what choice I make now, no matter how much I think it through, that in a few decades, it'll all be the same, that none of us can really do anything? Is that the kind of truth we want? Is that the kind of honesty?
What kind of sick bastard tells a child that by the time they reach a certain age, their body will slowly begin to fall apart, that every second form birth is a second closer to the end? But it's the truth, isn't it? The meaning of life, our purposes, our pleasures, for what? Do we really want to know?
I've been question in it all, but the more and more I think about it, and the clearer it becomes, the faster I start to run the other way. Ignorance is truly bliss, my friend.
And me? Well for now, I am lost. Godless, but pious and faithful anyways, moving on, hurtling towards some end, some finality, when I haven't even lived yet. Then again, maybe this is all the "living" I ever really get to do? Whatever the case, I'd rather be blissfully ignorant, thankfully immunized, and hopelessly trapped than ever have to face it. Call me weak, but I call it self-preservation. Call me foolish, but I've already walked away.