Truth is Dynamic
I’ve been musing a lot recently about the dynamic nature of Truth. When you’re writing memoir, you have the perspective of what Truth is for you now - that you didn’t actually want the thing you tried to convince yourself you wanted; that you no longer need the things you once gripped so tightly; that you’ve bravely met some of the experiences that used to terrify you. There’s what you thought back in the moment, what you felt, how you understand those feelings now. And then there’s the Truth of those you shared experiences with - how they felt in the moment, how they remember things now. The accounts usually conflict.
In college, I took a psychology course on memory. I was aghast to learn how much eyewitness testimony is valued, when in fact it is so fickle and easily manipulable. (Don’t get me started on law school). So how do you tell an honest story?
You let your body go back to that moment and notice what happens somatically. You bring back sounds and smells and the confusion of a moment that is never one-dimensional. You allow your current perspective the space it asks for, and the story becomes a conversation, a tableau more concerned with the full picture of the moment than the minutiae.
Sometimes the exact words matter. And sometimes it’s the way your knees protest when you’ve been sitting in one position for too long, or the tone someone takes when they realize they stepped a bit too far, or the rustle of dry grass in a passing breeze. An honest story holds space for these details and the passage of time, for a fluid truth that is always fully right and a little bit wrong.
