I like today’s teabag wisdom.  It says so much in so few words.  What is truth anyway?  Is it the absence of lies?  Truth is certainly talked about in all religions.  I remember growing up and hearing my mother tell me to always speak the truth.  But sometimes speaking the truth can hurt someone, so then what do you do?  The wise thing might be not to say anything, yet we sometimes cover up the truth with a white lie.  We tell ourselves that that’s okay, because we aren’t hurting anyone, but are we deceiving ourselves?  Do our non-truths come back to haunt us?

I think the truth goes beyond speech.  When we deny the truth, we accumulate negativity.  One little lie turns into bigger lies.  We begin to delude ourselves.  We come to the point that we can’t tell the difference between truth and non-truth.  Negative emotions of fear and anger surface and we don’t know where they came from.

So how do we get past the lies we tell ourselves and come back to the truth?  I certainly don’t have all the answers.  But I know that when negative thoughts arise, they come from fear.  We end up playing the “what if” game with ourselves.  We conjure up the worst possible scenario and that fear stops us in our tracks. 

One thing we must constantly remind ourselves is that “what if” isn’t the truth.  The truth is not our fear of what might happen in the future.  The truth is not holding on to anger from some past hurt.  The truth is this moment.  The truth is not lying to yourself or lying to others.  The truth is peace.  And peace is everything.