~Mark Twain
I am always looking for books that help me to be a better person. Many of the books I read are centered on Christ. One of the things I struggle with is when I encounter a book that uses a fictional book that presents itself as factual. The author has the idea that placing the facts in a fictional context the factual information will be more readable and understandable. I appreciate their perspective but then I am not sure when the facts end and the fiction begins. I was raised in a world that was recreated daily by the adults in my life. What was true yesterday, may or may not be true today. I took what ever today's words to be the truth. Now as an adult, I get frustrated when I can't sort out fact and fiction. I wanted everything Black and White clearly defining what was right and wrong. My counselor discouraged me from looking for this black and white world. He suggested that there are many gray areas and plenty of times when it is my perspective vs. someone else's perspective. I better understood this when I entered the world of art. The teacher would give an assignment. Everyone in the class would hear the same instructions then when the assignment was turned in each project was unique. A few of the projects would not meet the requirements and the teacher would point out the errors in their thinking. However, many of the projects would meet all the requirements but be totally unique from each other. I appreciated more and more that many times I am not faced with the problem of what is fact and what is fiction, sometimes my question is what is my perspective of the facts and what is their perspective of the same facts. This really eased my mind. I now understand that some of the things I was taught as "facts" as a child were many times someones opinion. Now I catch myself doing the same thing, spouting off my opinion's as facts. I learned a lot over the years and the kindest thing I learned was I don't need to create a black and white world to be happy. Gray is beautiful and doing my own research by taking pictures of gray there is quite a bit out there.
3 comments:
Thank you, thank you, thank you! This makes so much sense and I needed to read it!
I also believed every day's different versions of "facts". Also hated fiction "based" on facts - pure facts or pure fiction, please! I hated having to tell them apart. But now that I'm writing again, I can see there are so many facts in fiction, truths that are honest and real, also they're fictitious... and even historical books and articles purporting to be "all fact", are not that - any narrative involves fiction and interpretation. For instance, I've been doing some historical research lately (I've always been a literature major, the total subjectivity of dealing with lit was always soothing to me), and there are as many different histories of anything and everything as there are authors.
My history is also just mine. My parents' history of the same period is different and always will be. I've been stalking my dreams for the memory of my late mother trying to force her to validate my version (yes, in my dreams; yes, I'm obsessing). And she won't. Not even in my dreams.
We've been discovering truths, all of us who were brainwashed as children. But they're not THE truth. We've just finally found our own voices, our own versions of the truth, our own interpretations of the "facts".
learning what is yours and others opinions vs. black and white truth is very freeing, and hard to learn for everyone. Congrats Ruth (from Janet since I seem to only be able to post anon. now)
I just had an FB conversation with my niece about her late father, my older brother.
She referred to him as a "hippie" and since I experienced him everyday in the 60's, long before she was born, I gave her my take on what he was like back then, which was far from a hippie. She was quite annoyed with my perspective and posted an "edgy" reply.
In my response, I pointed out that we both experienced him at a different time and from a different perspective. I had 1st hand interactions as his sister, and she, years later, interacted as his daughter.
Neither one of us is "wrong", neither one of us is distorting facts, but sadly she doesn't share that view.
If she were still speaking to me I might direct her to your post!
Hugs!
Post a Comment