What are some bitter truths?
Life itself is the biggest and the bitterest truth.
Regardless, in our daily life, we often encounter this kind of question and answers vary according to the perspectives that people have about life. However, irrespective of the variation of perspectives and thus answers, one fundamental reality is that all truths are bitter and not some.
Therefore, to ask what are some bitter truths is also like asking what are some black colors. Truths are always bitter (unless they are sugar coated) and never sweet. Only lies are sweet. And lies are like delusions that keep us from being totally despaired or hopeless. But we can’t always live in a Utopian world or fools paradise because it will stunt our mental growth. Thus sooner or later we have to seek as well as face the truth (like Buddha who was also having a carefree life in a palace before leaving it in search of truth) so that we are able to understand life and its true purpose. If we try to keep ignoring the truth, then truth (like sun) will emerge on its own and prove to be a bombshell that can even shatter us to the core. Remember that people who remain in the dark for so long can become blind if they are suddenly brought into the dazzling daylight.
Therefore, we can not always remain inside the cocoon of lies or our own imaginary world as it will become a cage making us a captive of our self imposed, self destructive, and pretty bleak seclusion. In order to change and then progress or vice versa, we would have to liberate ourselves form this cage and only truth can liberate us. And only after coming out of this cocoon, we will be able to look out, with a whole new kind of eyes, and see what sort of new world is waiting for us.
In this context enjoy the following bitter truths because they are good for your mental health:
- After life,the bitterest of all the truths is that nobody is the “centre of universe.” Most people think they are not only different but also very very important and this kind of delusion makes them rude and arrogant. We are different from each other, it is right, but the reality is that “you are unique like everyone else. Thus nobody is the centre of universe.
- We always believe in face value and are hardly able to know the real worth of any thing or person.
- We believe that material gains make us a better and happier. But that is wrong. As someone has said, you can not be rich or happy until you have something money can’t buy.
- Our obsession with happiness is what prevents its attainment.
- We are always waiting for something that is not going to happen.
- We are always waiting for some superman, spider-man, batman or any messiah to get us out of our predicament. While the fact is that liberation comes from within and as Epictetus has put it, “it (life) is not what happens to you but how you react to it that matters.”
- Nobody cares how difficult our life is and we are the authors of our own life stories. Only you are responsible for your problems and thus you have to solve them on your own. You can seek help but you can’ blame anyone else.
- Life is never perfect and thus we can never be free from pain.
- And as Dita Von Teese says, “You can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world and there will still be somebody who hates peaches.”
- We don’t trust people for two reasons: first is that “we don’t know them” and second is that “we know them.”
- And someone rightly said that the saddest thing about betrayal is that it never comes from enemies.
- Another truth, believe it or not, according to Chanakya, is that “there is some self interest behind every friendship. There is no friendship without self interest.”
- Most of us don’t even know how to say a definite “NO.”
- And finally, most of the people think that being busy (or posing to be like) means being creative or productive. However, what they choose to ignore is that there is a difference between an activity and creativity. Irony is that most people even tend to wear busy as “badge of honour;” like being busy is a good thing. Being busy is usually doing stuff for hours without producing any tangible value. On the other hand productivity has more to do with what is actually accomplished. Moreover, being busy is frantic, while being productive is focused.
However, it is pertinent to note that people can only swallow the bitter pill if it is sugar coated, so if you want to tell them truth, then, as Oscar Wilde puts it, “make them laugh, otherwise they will kill you.”
And, according to Dorothy Sayers English crime writer and poet), the great advantage about telling the truth is that nobody ever believes it.
In the end, I hope that in spite of all the bitterness, these truths will make you laugh at yourself . And as the saying goes, blessed are those who can laugh at themselves for they shall never cease to be amused.
References:
i) https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/241528-the-great-advantage-about-telling-the-truth-is-that-nobody
iii) https://www.vox.com/first-person/2016/10/4/13093380/happiness-america-ruth-whippman
