What is True
What is True
by Eugene Gendlin
What is true is already so.
Owning up to it doesn’t make it worse.
Not being open about it doesn’t make it go away.
And because it’s true, it is what is there to be interacted with.
Anything untrue isn’t there to be lived.
People can stand what is true,
for they are already enduring it.
Umm, a poem about perception, an opinion on how to live–Truth will set you free, and apparently it shouldn’t piss you off. lol. I like the confidence in the delivery here. I think there is ‘truth’ to the assertions poet in this piece likening truth to a ‘natural law’. So many people will tell you truth is arbitrary and subjective but what we discover is a common ground in much of life.
I appreciated the philosophical subject in this poem and its brevity–well done!
Interesting, but I have to take exception to it. Even if “what is true” is absolute, “owning up to it” can make it worse, in the perceiver’s mind, which may opt for denial as a defense. If so, “not being open about it” will “make it go away,” if only in the perceiver’s mind, which may be all-important. In which case, it isn’t “there to be interacted with,” and the “untrue” is “there to be lived.” Many cannot “stand what is true” and therefore deny it so they don’t have to endure it. Look at Nazi Germany, or this country at present. Or almost anybody anywhere.