What is Truth?

The case against being absolutely sure of anything.

My family has a book club and we got on the topic of whether truth exists, and who gets to claim it. I used to feel like truth was one of those slippery human words like “wellness” or “freedom” or “clean ingredients,” where everyone’s definition is slightly different but says it with tremendous confidence anyway.

But I think I've changed my mind because, guys... I've finally found the truth! You'll all be relieved to know the search is over. And if you're thinking that's exactly the kind of sentence that should make everyone slowly back toward the nearest exit... I'd say that's a healthy instinct.

Lately, instead of asking what is true, I’ve started paying attention to what truth does. Some things are true like how fire burns skin whether or not you believe in thermodynamics. Human skin wrinkles with time, even if you use botox. A cut bleeds. So, yes. Truth exists.

I think the problem is how we detect the truth. We use the brain, and treat it like an oracle, but it’s more like a frantic scavenger always looking for danger, validation, and patterns. It isn't objective or calm like a monk evaluating reality because it’s carrying unresolved childhood wounds. Your brain will keep reworking scenes from your life like a stressed screenwriter under a deadline. Every memory you have is filtered through every version of you that came after it. This puts us in an absurd position as a species, because we are capable of genuine insight while trying to perceive reality through instruments that panic when someone uses the wrong tone. And yet despite the faulty equipment, we keep wanting the truth anyway. And I love that about us.

What becomes dangerous isn’t doubt, it’s certainty. Which is different than confidence. Confidence can sit beside doubt like two old women on a porch talking trash and shelling corn. They interrupt each other, argue a little, forget what they were saying, then carry on. Nobody gets hurt.

Meanwhile, certainty zipties doubt to a radiator in the basement, turns the radio up so nobody can hear the yelling, throws on a black ski mask, and struts out the front door convinced it's the hero of the story. History has watched this movie before. It rarely ends well. Because once you become absolutely certain, curiosity feels offensive, questions are threats, and empathy is suspicious because it requires you to temporarily enter somebody else’s reality and certainty haaaaates that.

This is why History is so fascinating. It’s like a giant scrapbook full of things humans will do once they become convinced God personally endorses their opinions. History is littered with people who never woke up thinking, “I'm becoming the villain today.” They woke up believing they were defending truth. That's what certainty does. It has an astonishing ability to make cruelty feel righteous. I’ve done this too, obviously. Not on a genocidal scale, thankfully, but certainly in marriages, arguments, friendships, and in that unbearable way I’ve sometimes said “well actually” right before discovering I was catastrophically wrong. The certainty felt intelligent, or righteously clean.

The mind also has this glitch where it thinks whatever feels familiar is somehow good or true. If you’re exposed to a certain behavior long enough you don’t ask whether it’s healthy and so you just stamp it as “normal.” Which is why people stay in dynamics that are slowly killing them. Which is why somebody raised around chaos can believe that drama is chemistry. This type of known pain feels weirdly trustworthy. Truth carries an ax. It doesn’t integrate itself into a life you’ve built around avoidance. It wrecks things first, mainly the things you created specifically so you wouldn’t have to look directly at reality.

This is why midlife has the vibe of a housefire that turns out to be an electrical problem that’s been smoldering in the walls since the 80’s. The marriage everyone envied, the faith that kept everyone pleasant, the identity everyone praised. Then in our 40s, our body, which has been taking furious notes this entire time, walks in carrying a three-inch thick binder, drops it on the table, opens to page one, and says, "I'm going to need you to explain... all of this. Let's start with 1992.”

And often those people who everyone called, “black sheep” or “crazy” were simply the first ones whose tolerance for illusion expired. The person saying the true thing rarely gets welcomed with outstretched arms and a smile.

Some truths can be measured with rulers, microscopes, MRI machines, and blood tests. Others only reveal themselves after you've lived with someone for twelve years, buried a parent, raised a child, or finally admitted something to yourself you've been avoiding since the 80’s. Both can be true. They simply ask different things of us.

But I also don't think we navigate reality through logic alone. We seem strangely sensitive to coherence. Sometimes a person says all the right words and something still feels... off. Other times they stumble through an apology, forget half the sentences they meant to say, and yet you believe them. I can't fully explain that. Maybe it's because maintaining a false self requires constant management. There is a kind of internal vigilance that eventually leaks through the cracks. Truth, by comparison, has an unmistakable coherence. It doesn't seem to be working nearly as hard.

Anyway, the thing I’m fumbling toward is how truth is the exhausting relief of no longer splitting yourself into compartments. A condition where what you believe, what you say, what you do, and what your body knows are all facing roughly the same direction. Because lying costs energy, even when nobody catches you.

The wisest people I know are the ones least interested in sounding certain. They stay open even after ego has settled in.

The wisest people I know are not the people most convinced they’ve arrived at truth. They’re the people who remember, with a sort of exhausted tenderness, how many previous versions of themselves were absolutely positive and still wrong.

So yes, I think truth exists. I think we brush against it now and then, usually while looking for something else. But I don’t think any of us gets to put a fence around it, stamp our name on it, or charge admission. The second you or any institution becomes convinced it fully possesses the truth, it has probably already toodle-oo'd out the back door. Perhaps the point isn’t becoming someone who possesses the truth. Perhaps it’s becoming someone who can survive the moment truth invites you to become someone new. To me, truth is what remains after our favorite illusions have wandered off.

With love,

Sarah Steed xx