I do believe that we all have an intuitive sense for truth. We know the truth at all times, we feel it, we can sense it deep down. But for a variety of reasons, we cover it up, we edit it, we apply a filter to it, we hide it behind logic or stories we’re attached to.
Here’s me riffing on the idea of this “truth sense”.
Transcript:
one thing that we oftentimes say about children and it’s easy to believe in, easy to accept is that children.
Intuitively can tell bullshit from the truth, right. They children just know when you’re, when they’re lied to when there’s both. So they just get it and instantly reflected back to you. They don’t hold back when they don’t believe, you know, and then I thought the same is true to some degree with adults.
Not that they tell you instantly when they don’t believe it, but I believe even as adults. We know, we know the truth at all times. We do. We feel it. We might not think it, but we feel it. We know when people lie to us, we know when somebody is uncomfortable around us. We know when someone is critical with us, we know when somebody is doing something that’s harming us.
We know deep down, we know, but we choose or variety of reasons in the moment to reject that truth. Or to edit it or to hide it or to overplay it with some other truth, a logic. But I think the deep down that capacity, it always felt to me that when we talked about this, like sensing of children that we were saying that as children, we all have it and then we lose it.
But now I think what if we always have it, we never ever lose it. The only difference is that our mind is becoming much louder. And with that, our willingness and our need to distract ourselves to deceive ourselves, our ego becomes bigger, our fears, whatever, whatever it is, societal, you know, overlay of how we interpret reality and what we think we should or shouldn’t do or say, but deep down.
In so many ways, we just, it seems to me that we always know, even if the person seems to not know it all in some way manifests itself, that they know how you truly feel about what’s truly going on. I was thinking about this. I, um, was talking to Sofian on the weekend about this interesting phenomenon between him and I on one specific subject, which is he’s launching a new venture.
And I’ve been critical of some elements of that venture in the past. And then point, I decided, I told him what I like about what he’s planning to do. And I told him what I dislike. There’s nothing more to say here for me. Right? Like I offered my truth and now wish him luck. I’ll wait and see what happens.
Funny enough, any, and every time that we would meet. At one point or another, he would launch into a, what I would experience as sort of a pitch session of why not just this new ventures going well, but how my concerns are invalid and funny enough, it, at some point I stopped responding to it. Right. So I would just go, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Cool. All right. Good luck. Excited about the next update and of need to keep going. And it would end the conversation on something that was clearly an unsatisfying moment to him. Like he would, and we both would not. In the theater of this and he would not go well, see, all right, good.
That we in agreement that there was zero satisfaction, zero alignment that was in the background. If you heard the notes of I emotions that were all off, you know, it’s gonna a squeaking, you know, it was, there was no harmony because I said, sure, sure, cool. Although I didn’t mean it. And he said, right. I’m glad that you totally agreed with it.
Although he knew it’s not true. And, and because of that, he just. Didn’t stop doing it. Anytime we talk, he would launch into some kind of a pitch about it. And I would just internally just, you know, hang my head, my shoulders down and go, I don’t care. I don’t want to hear this. Or do I have to hear this? I didn’t say anything about it.
Why am I being consistently pushed to be convinced of something that I’m not convinced off? All right. Just let it be. Who cares? And when I told him, you know, uh, this, this weekend, he first, he looked very kind of concentrating, very kind of intense look. And then he was stroking his chin and he looked at me and started shaking.
His head is like, yeah, you’re right. You’re right. When was the last time this happened? And I told him, well, last time we worked out. And he was thinking, yeah, last time we worked out, it was remembering. And then it went, remember when I stopped telling you about the business and then two minutes later. I turned around while I was doing one exercise and you’re doing another, I turned around and I told you who gives a fuck?
What you think? Remember that? And I said, yeah, I remember that. It’s like, that’s what I meant. I’m like, I know, because it was out of context, we stopped talking about this. We started talking about something totally different. And then you turn around. It’s like, who gives a shit? What you think? And I knew what he meant.
He meant why do I care so much? Why the fuck do I care what you think? And I was in agreement in that moment. I was like, I don’t know. I don’t want you to care about this. Just do your thing. And we had a good conversation about it, but it’s funny because these kinds of this is a recent example that comes to my mind of it.
Doesn’t matter how much I smile and nod. It doesn’t matter how much he was. Pretending to be accepting my agreement. We both knew it wasn’t true. And so it was not resolved and I could have done, uh, uh, you know, I think in the past I would always plays the fault with, I would have placed the fault with him.
Cause it, my interpretation of the situation, I would have said, this is just his insecurity. And now his insecurity is burdening me because the way I like to do critical feedback, you know, this, you can attest to this for giving me a lot of critical feedback in the past is I ask, what is your truth? You tell me the socks.
I go, why you tell me because of X? And I just take it. Yep. And then I’ll think about it and I’ll decide. Do I agree or not? Oftentimes I agree with you. Like, I trust your judgment in these situations once in a while I disagree with you, but I never come back or very rarely would I ever even dream of coming back and trying to convince you and I never argue, never, ever argue.
And so I’m so sensitive to this because in this case, like, and. It’s a great example of a friend who really wants the harsh truth, wants my critical feedback demands. It asks for, it tells me he appreciates it, but it almost never just takes it. He takes it. And then he fights with me and then he brings up at getting in fights with me again, and then I stop engaging and then he just keeps fighting on his own in front of me.
And to me, that was always frustrating. I was like, why do I have to endure this? You asked for my, my truth. I gave it to you not deal with it. Being adult stopped bothering me. I won’t believe what you want me to believe. So you feel good? I’ll believe it when I believe it, but I can’t believe it. So you shut up and feel good about your world.
Now I wonder maybe an improvement on my part. Could be to say this out loud, at some point to set a boundary to say, listen, we’re not getting agreement on this, but you should trust yourself. I don’t want to talk about this anymore though. And then when that person brings up again, go let me stop you I’d much rather talk to you about something else.
This is not interesting to me. I wish you best of luck, but unless you have new information, let’s not talk about this. I’m not interested in this topic today. Instead of doing what I oftentimes used to do, which is silently endure until the person talk themselves out and then change the subject and keep talking, because that sucks for them.
They keep talking and talking and as I’m silent, they just can’t help themselves. It’s just keep talking. They’re suffering too. It’s not enjoyable to them. And I’m sorry, suffering because nobody sets a boundary. Right. I was always under the impression I’m the adult, but I was always also childish by not setting a boundary, not saying stop.
I don’t want to hear this and I don’t enjoy this. I wish you best of luck, but I’d rather talk to you about something. Hmm. So I’ll see, I’ll try that and see how well that works in the future. But coming back to my original point, I don’t think we ever lose that truth sense. I think there’s a wide range of how far we are at times from being able to glean the truth.
See it, right. Sometimes it seems that it’s very far away from us and it’s almost impossible to see, but I think it’s always there. I don’t think we lose that sense. We just bury it, but it’s still there. It’s still sending signals. I think people know, people just always kind of know what really is going on.
They always do.