We hold Truths to be self evident after reading one or two articles written by experts: from Harvard, from the CDC, from a Textbook, from the Bible. And while I do believe that some Truths are self evident, I do not think most of what we hold as true can actually be said to be the Truth.
Saying you understand Gravity after taking a physics course is like saying you are an athlete after jogging a few times.
Not to mention, how can you know about something that even the experts can’t agree about?
Truth is a pursuit, it is not a destination.
When I was traveling with a friend in Guatemala, she developed a rash on her leg. It was small but persistent no matter what she seemed to put on it. When it did not go away on it’s own, we went to see a doctor in Panajachel.
He was recommended and when he looked at the rash on my friends leg, he said it was ‘Herpes’ and gave her a prescription. He said the ointment would make it feel better but that it would take a while to clear.
My friend is someone who when she walks into a room or a party, people assume she is famous. She is very pretty, and she dresses very femininely and very well. She calls 4 inch heals, 'pumps'. To make matters worse in Guatemala, she has very light blond hair. In general, her experience in Guatemala was that she was fending off assumptions constantly that she is promiscuous, or unintelligent. In this sense traveling, while pleasurable, also carried an immense amount of stress.
So when the doctor said, ‘Herpes’, she flipped. She already was a bit suspicious of medical doctors, and this confirmed all of her suspicions. And I comforted her because she was dear to me, and I felt sad that she was upset, and I was also somewhat mystified by the doctor’s insistence that my friend had Herpes on her leg.
This all happened a while ago, let’s say 10 years ago. Pan into the present day, and I have found myself suffering from a similar pimple like rash on the soles of my feet (about 3 years ago) and again a year ago, and then now it has appeared on my hands. I am a researcher, and visually oriented, and so I do a search for rash on palms, and click on the article for images that look similar to what I am experiencing.
I had assumed early on that it was a result of touching a certain clay body that I was working with that smelled a bit septic. I was experimenting with river clay in the weeks past and firing it in a kiln I just built. I am also a gardener and the rash on my feet I assumed, at the time, was a similar thing. Stepping in the mud while watering. So I assumed that the rash was perhaps a parasite or a worm or some sort of bacterial infection. I took Ivermectin, and rubbed tea tree oil and antibacterial rub, but, again, no real difference. I also treated it for a bit of time with a UV light I have, and that did not seem to do much either. The rash just kept getting little by little, worse and worse.
After a great deal of time crossing out things it is not, I stumbled on a group of images that all pointed to Shingles. They all say there is little you can do except for prescription drugs if you catch it early (too late for me but I will be seeing a doctor about it today in case).
Shingles is brought on in later life if you have had chicken pocks. It comes out in times of environmental or physical stress. It did not really click until I read a few articles.
Herpes Zoster is the virus behind what we call ‘Chicken Pox’. When it comes back in later life, we call it ‘Shingles’. In the States, we associate the word ‘Herpes’ with venereal diseases and promiscuity. And so we call the 'Herpes' variety that kids get in school by another name, for crying out loud. It's in the 'second' and 'third' worlds where they are not afraid to call it what it is.
So the revelation of this truth that my friend actually likely DID have Herpes, hit me like the kind of laughter it takes a few weeks to recover from. I am still laughing about it.
In this case, I am still not CERTAIN, as I have not cultured my hand, and we did not culture my friend’s leg rash. But using deduction, and a somewhat organized mental filing system, I put another few pieces into the puzzle of what happened on that fateful day 10 years ago. I still do not know the Truth, but I am further along with lower-case truths that some might call well developed hypothesis.
I could rest right now and think I do know the big T Truth, but this would be foolish because it would close me off to further learning. We might at some point in the future come to agree as a society that the germs we agreed to agree on 100 years ago, are not really the full Truth story. That what we refer to as ‘viruses’ are actually something different. Or that infections are more of an inner state than an outer assault.
Who knows?
I certainly do not. But that doesn’t stop me from the pursuit of it.