FIND YOUR OWN TRUTH

I have aspirations of being a motivational speaker, a writer who puts words down that make an impact on someone else's life but I don't aim to make what I say the universal truth. I write and speak what is truth for me and hope that it will resonate with someone out there.  Yet I do not in any way want to make my experiences and what I know the only truth there is.

I use social networks quite a lot to put my message across and well to generally vent about this and that which I observe. At the same time I love to read about other people's thoughts and experiences and use what they share to learn. We can never claim to know it all and even in trying to hold on to what we believe is truth, we should still be open minded and adaptable enough to leave some room for learning from others. But I have just this one thing that nags me.

People who believe their truth is the gospel and that there is only one way of looking at things and that is their way. Social networks have opened the door for us to take in a lot of information but at the same time, the information we receive can be misleading and quite honestly biased. I have a problem with people taking their personal experiences and making them universal, because something happened a certain way for you, it automatically means it will happen the same way for others. That is misleading.

My experiences and feelings may be similar to that of the next person but can they ever be completely the same? We may have the same experience but the dynamics that lead to it will surely differ and so will what we take from the experience. It would be a misrepresentation to put across what I know as the only way there is. People read books about someone's experience or observation and immediately turn that into their mini bible that dictates what they do and the choices they make. They listen to speakers and famous people relate their stories and that suddenly becomes the only angle from which they view life.  That is flawed.

I think it's important that while being open to other views, we still make an effort to search for our own truth. What someone else has done and gone through can't be a reliable foundation on which you base your life and future decisions. While I am all for the idea of people sharing their struggles and stories of triumph, that should not be the only lens which we use to view life. Human beings are too complex to box into a one size fits all idea of what life is.  Our backgrounds, history and experiences differ and therefore we differ too.

Amidst the vast sources of information at our disposal, how we live and what we do should still be based on what we know personally and what we have seen work in our lives. We all have our methods and ultimately all want to get to a place where we are at peace and living out our purpose. Even success is not universal, for one it might be a mansion on the hills and for another it may be simply living with content.  What we call success will depend on who we are and what we deem important in life, one person's method can't be the only way.

We should all strive to find the perfect balance between learning from others while still maintaining who we are and what makes us unique. No person, I don't care how successful has the formula to life. We do what we can with what we have and hope for the best. Find your own truth, that which works for you. It need not match with what society says as long as at the end of it all, it brings you to what makes you complete and happy and feeling like you have conquered.