Telling the Truth — Full Truth Does Not Reveal Itself in a Flash
Those seeking to tell the truth first need to know it well enough to state it clearly. I have recently told a good number of truths (at least I hope they are!) about the Efficient Market Disease in articles posted to this site. On the morning of May 13, 2002, when I put up the post that kicked off The Great Safe Withdrawal Rate Debate, I doubt that I could have told you what the Efficient Market Theory was. Six years later, I’m so sure of myself re its manifold flaws that I refer to it as a disease. How did I get to be such an expert?
Not by reading books. Not by attending lectures. Not by working calculators. I did it by stating out loud one difficult truth that I was sure of, and then seeing where that led my thought processes, and then stating out loud a second difficult truth, and so on and so on. I’m not saying that books and lectures and calculators don’t matter. I’m saying that truth is often something that has to grow on you. If you rely on books and lectures and calculators to feed you truths whole, you may never grasp them. You need to take the information bits you come across and work them into something by defining them and clarifying them and extending them.
I have often found truth to be like a photograph that develops before your eyes. You start out with a hazy idea of what it looks like. Apply patience and courage and elbow grease and you end up in time with something that is sharper and more colorful and more compelling.
Telling the Truth — Soft Truths Last Longer
Billy Joel has a song in which he complains that “honesty is hardly ever heard.” Paul Simon’s complaint is a different one; he asks for “some tenderness beneath your honesty.”
I relate more strongly to the Simon song. People do have a hard time being blunt, but often for good reason. Things that seem simple are often not so simple when you look deep. Hard boastful truths are often empty truths. Truths that come with the edges sanded down have a staying power that aggressively worded truths often lack. That’s because they are more true.
Telling the Truth — Hard Sayings Need to be Said
So when is it the right thing to be blunt?
Examine why it is that you are holding back. Are you worried about the effect that your hard saying will have on others or about what you may experience if you give voice to it?
I don’t think that doctors should sugarcoat the realities. If I am going to die, I want to prepare for it. I want to know. It is wrong for a doctor not to tell me what I need to know because of the small anguish he would feel as the result of causing me a big anguish that I need to get about the business of experiencing.
Telling the Truth — The Truth Will Set You Financially Free
The cause of most financial problems is a weakness in telling the truth.
On the first year in which my wife and I kept a budget, I checked the receipts from one day of Christmas shopping. The truth was that I had spent more than double what I thought I had spent. We lie to ourselves all the time.
I think this is why many of us do not like to keep budgets. It’s not that they are difficult or boring. It’s that they are so darn truthful.
You have to want the thing that the budget is going to get you enough to permit the darn truth-teller a room in your house.
Telling the Truth — Opposite Things Cannot Both Be True
Valuations affect the long-term value proposition of stocks.
Valuations do not affect the long-term value proposition of stocks.
Both things cannot be so.
This is a controversial claim I am making here. It shouldn’t be. Both of these propositions cannot be correct. Aristotle came forward with the Law of Non-Contradiction a good ways back.
Maybe they should require that those offering investment advice take a course in Greek Philosophy.
Telling the Truth — Opposite Things Can Both Be True
Aristotle didn’t know everything.
It’s possible to “retire” from some aspects of paycheck dependence while holding onto other aspects of paycheck dependence. Maybe you have saved enough that you no longer need to do corporate work but do need to earn something with work you enjoy more to supplement the amount thrown off by your investments.
You will deny yourself access to important truths if you become so mushy in your thinking as to believe that opposite things can both be so. You will deny yourself access to other important truths if you become so rigid in your thinking as to believe that you must stick with the conventional definitions of things.
Telling the Truth — Emotion Is a Check
It’s a good idea to add numbers two different ways (perhaps once by calculator and once by hand) when you want to be sure to get the calculation right. You might repeat the same mistake if you do the calculation the same way twice.
Look for checks to verify your thinking. Is it only logic that supports your truth? Does the claim feel true? Does it satisfy the demands of common sense? Does it fit in with other things you know to be true? Does it give rise to disturbing puzzles? Does it offer a solution to disturbing puzzles?
Some people think that all truths come from the use of reason. I do not believe this even a little bit. We cannot even turn the reasoning software in our brain on until we find the emotion that permits us to do so.
Telling the Truth — Emotion Is Not a Check
The trouble with paying attention to emotions is that they can mislead you without leaving a paper trail.
When I was putting together my Retire Early plan, I was checking all sorts of things — books, numbers in my budget, numbers in other people’s budgets. I wasn’t really looking for strategies; I was looking for confirmation of the efficacy of strategies I had already decided on. I’m capable of independent thinking. But I don’t know that any of us are able to totally ignore being influenced by what other people think.
There are times when thoughts can become emotions and there are times when emotions can become thoughts. The dividing line between the two is not as sharp as we think it is (or is that as we feel it is?).
Telling the Truth Opens Doors
One truth leads to another and that to another and that to another. Telling the truth is often a scary business. It’s scary because it is the opening of a door and you don’t know for sure what is on the other side. Still, it is by opening doors that you get places.
There are all sorts of jobs that I am qualified for today that I was not qualified for on the day when I first began examining the financial freedom concept. I won’t be offered the chance to work in most of those jobs. But I might someday be offered the opportunity to work in one of them and you only need one job you love to live a rich life. By the time I get to The Door That Counts I will have opened dozens of less significant doors.
You’ve got to make sure that the first door has lots of good doors behind it. You need to rely on intuition for this. You cannot see what is behind the first door. You sometimes can gain a sense of where it might possibly lead.
Telling the Truth Is like Playing with Legos
Each piece is something small. The end product can be magnificent.
Telling the Truth — Truth Gets Tired, It Gets Old, It Gets Weak, It Dies
The New School will someday be replaced by The New New School.
I could not on a bet tell you today how it is going to happen. That’s because, while I have risen above The Old School, I am still influenced by it. I was able to imagine something better than The Old School, but my imagination is big enough to take only a single jump. Some hotshot who grows up on The New School will be able to see its flaws and take us higher.
I’ll no doubt experience an urge to shut the guy (or gal) up. I can only pray that I resist it.
Telling the Truth — Truth is Sometimes Cold and Hard and Cruel
I am all for telling the truth. But I think it romanticizes truth to say that it is always for the best. Some truths are extremely difficult to take in. Perhaps we will understand why this must be so when we get to heaven.
I like to think that the most awful truth serves some good ultimate purpose. It’s hard to see how with the eyes we were given to work with during our journey through the Valley of Tears.
Telling the Truth — Going to Confession Helps
If you want to learn how to tell the truth, start by telling the truth about yourself. That gives you an idea of what your medicine tastes like, eh?
If you can take it, perhaps you are ready to deliver some truths to some others. Feeling the sting helps you develop the sympathy needed to take the rough edges off those hard and sober truths and transform them into something soft and fair and balanced and real and more true.
Telling the Truth — Truth is a Community Event
I suppose that there is such a thing as an independent truth-teller who offers pronouncements from a rock.
I see a community truth as a better developed and more sophisticated truth. The difference is that communities are comprised of multiple personality types. The lone truth teller can only know what an individual can know. A community can speak paradoxes more effectively, and it is not uncommon for truth to be paradoxical.
This is why song lyrics and punch lines and parables can communicate truths effectively. Song lyrics and punch lines and parables carry in them more paradox (and more community too in most cases) than declarative sentences.
Telling the Truth — Truth is a Solitary Path
Sometimes one has to break off from the community to gather the pieces of a truth that the community needs to consider. All communities include within them lone wolves (paradoxically enough).
Telling the Truth — Pain Can Lead to Truth
Everybody likes truth. No one likes pain. But the two often travel as a couple.
It is by having our hearts broken in two that we create the space by which a new love enters.
Telling the Truth Gets Harder as You Age
You are able to tell the truth about more things as you age. You know more.
But the older you are the more you have invested in your current beliefs. Who wants to admit having been wrong about something he has believed for 50 years?
The most difficult aspect of truth telling is not gathering information. It is gathering courage. Find some way to hold onto courage as you gain experience, and you’ve got it nailed.
Telling the Truth — Truth is Powerful
Dylan likes to tell a story about a fellow from the old days who could take on a king with just a guitar and a harmonica. It happens.