NB: I’ve been writing a series of daily entries for January 2025. They deal with a variety of issues, some medical, and some personal. I’ll be cross-posting many of them here as well.

Ernest Hemingway wrote that the easiest way to get started writing a novel was to make sure that the first sentence was absolutely truthful. 

Pontius Pilate, who apparently grew up two hours by car from my mother’s hometown, famously declared ‘What is truth?’ at the trial of Jesus. Interestingly, it was this response that allowed him to exclaim to the crowd that he ‘found no fault in this man.’  Pilate’s sophism argued that, legally, he could care less what any specific ‘truth’ was, unless it led to a violation of civil law. Truth, it seems, can serve a purpose even when it serves no purpose at all.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, preaching in Berlin as Hitler was coming to power, reflecting on  Pilate’s question,  said that although we may ask for the truth, there is also a truth that is asking for us, seeking us out.  

I think Bonhoeffer, who spent years in Nazi prisons before finally being executed, is saying that dealing realistically with unalterable truths, as they arrive in our lives, is the blueprint for an authentic existence.

Another famous Roman, the stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius, wrote ‘It’s the truth I’m after, and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance.’ I get his point, although perhaps we need to distinguish harm from pain. There are many aspects to confronting a truth that can be painful if indeed they are not harmful.

‘To thine own self be true’ is a line from  Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet. It is spoken by King Claudius’ chief minister,  Polonius, paradoxically, one of the more unpleasant characters in the plot.

I’ve had my fair share of self-delusions, and I am increasingly aware of just how difficult it can be to extend my perception of truth outside of my own belief silo. But age gives a certain fidelity to the process. In the midst of my uncertainties, I have many things I am now certain of, the simple reason being that they’ve been around for a while. 

‘Truth is a pathless land,’ wrote Jiddu Krishnamurti. ‘No guru, method, or system can lead you to it.’

The top of the front door of my high school was emblazoned with the phrase ‘The truth shall set you free,’  from the gospel of John, although I must admit to having passed underneath these words hundreds of times without ever giving them a second thought. 

Maybe that is the great dichotomy of truth.  It exists despite our wishes, fears, and self-deceptions.

It’s just there. Facts are stubborn things.

What will be the truth that we bring from the passing year to this new year?