The Absolute Truth

The masked crimefighter

There's a TV show I like to watch called "Life". It follows an L.A. cop who was framed for murder and sent to prison for 12 years, finally to be freed and put back into the LAPD as a detective.

The main character, Charlie, is good-natured, quirky and likable. Most of his quirks are played up as coping mechanisms to deal with the absolute horror of what he experienced as a result of being sent to prison.

One of these quirks is Charlie's seeming non sequiturs that leave everyone around him shaking their heads. In one of his more vulnerable moments, Charlie explains to another character that what he's doing is to "Tell a total stranger the absolute truth. It helps sometimes."

The absolute truth. Charlie's non sequiturs are actually deep, painful truths about who he is and what he's seen that make no impression on the hearer because, taken out of context, they mean very little.

At first I was impressed. It seemed like a fascinating dimension and played Charlie up as someone who lived more openly and honestly than those around him. Living authentically, living out of his depths!

On second thought it seemed to me that Charlie was deceiving those around him. He told them the truth but in a way they were sure to miss it. It was like some sort of game, he could tell himself he was authentic but still hide behind cryptic, out of context remarks that purported to be "the absolute truth" but without any concrete frame of reference lacked any meaning whatsoever.

Now I'm not so sure. Perhaps Charlie's only human. His moments of "absolute truth" may not be noble, but it could be that he's taking the first step of being honest with himself and saying out loud those things that he is so afraid of hearing. Of course, Charlie's just a TV character and he'll do whatever the writers tell him to. Still, every once in a while a show like "Life" will shine through with some clever writing and thoughtful ideas.

Maybe what Charlie's doing isn't so different from the bloggers I tend to rant about, who "post the most intimate details of their lives on the web for anyone to read, archive and distribute". Maybe bloggers are talking to themselves more than to anyone else. With the sheer number of blogs out there versus the number of readers most of us are kidding ourselves if we think otherwise anyway, but maybe that's ok.

Maybe the first step in living out of our depths is to hear ourselves say those things we fear the most.

"As soon as we feel at home in our own house, discover the dark corners as well as the light spots, the closed doors as well as the drafty rooms, our confusion will evaporate, our anxiety will diminish, and we will become capable of creative work." - Henri Nouwen, "The Wounded Healer"