Truth & Perspective...

Today I sit pondering individual truth and individual perspective. Yesterday, something ugly from my past reared it's head. We're talking 28 years ago folks. Someone entering my sphere convinced they can convince me to have a different perspective on the past, thereby altering my truth.

I am capable of allowing others to have their feelings and their own version of what happened. Every situation we are in, that involves another person, also inevitably involves all the roots that came before to grow that tree, that individual. Then what branches from their own trunk, their own mind and heart, is grown by only them. That is their perspective. That is their truth. You can not alter a person's truth, especially when there are large amounts of emotion attached. And especially when it is connected to someone they love. Picking at their own version of things, like plucking leaves from a tree, still will always leave the branches, or framework, that supported those original feelings or thoughts. That framework can exist their whole life, never to be altered, truth or falsehood, with the whole world watching and knowing differently, and yet, that is them. The longer some idea or feeling has had time to take root and been nurtured, either by love or hate, the more it can weather any season. I learned this long ago and am at piece with it personally.

I have my own history and truth about the past. I have no reservations or doubt about my own place in that history. It is just dreadfully hard when things long buried are brought to the light and contested. I find it exhausting and can't imagine it isn't exhausting for the other person as well, to pick their way into a battle they have/had no place in and try and champion a dead cause.

This isn't the only instance of Truth and Perspective in my life that I reflect on today. I look back over many years, throughout high school and some in my adult life, where people have wanted to believe their own truth and it somehow involves an inaccuracy about myself. It can certainly be argued that I should always fight for my name to be clear, for my truths to be heard. However, perhaps it is my nature, perhaps it was the early situation in life that I illude to, but I feel so aligned to just letting it be. I think pretty much in every situation there is no changing the other's mindset, there would only be grief and strife in a pointless battle, hacking at each other's truth, yet cutting away at and scaring something deeper in each person. Again, each person's version of things hinges on all the other people in their life, usually those they love.

So my lesson today is to just move past it myself, once again. Both Sidekick and Buddy are in school and I am not for a change. I feel perhaps I'll treat myself to a yoga class. Zen out a bit. Come home and eat good food and take care of my home. Wait for my children and husband to come back into my arms at days end. Those are truths, my truths. How full and blessed my life is. A perspective I won't change.... just grateful.