I’ve been thinking about truth and reality a lot recently. I grew up understanding a particular version of truth, and the version of reality that my brain was prepared to comprehend. (Also, the version of themselves that people were prepared to share with me — I can only process the information that I receive.)

One of my favorite quotes comes from Victor Wooten from his book The Music Lesson. The teacher is talking to the student, and the student is frustrated because the teacher isn’t being clear about what’s real.

Real? What is real? And tell me, what importance does reality have anyway? Did you learn from the experience? Now, that is important!

And I’m coming to the realization that the learning really is the more important thing. Because the reality that we were in yesterday is not the reality that we’re in today. We may be able to bring things forward from yesterday, but they are no longer real in the sense that there will be new information today that might change some or all of what I knew yesterday. The “truth” of yesterday is not always the “truth” of today.

I used to hold on very tightly to whatever my version of “truth” was at the time. It’s what I learned from my family of origin. And then the truth of my family of origin was obliterated. But I kept the hold on the fact that there is knowable “truth.” And the longer I live, the more I see that truth is variable. Not because things aren’t knowable, but things move. Most truths have a short shelf life. Some truths last longer. And a select few truths last a lifetime.

So what does one do with this? How do we operate when truths are changing? Experiment. That’s how you learn what truths are fickle and what truths stay. And which truths become even stronger through the process.

And the same with reality. Pressure test it. You don’t find your core by staying shallow. You follow something that leads to something else that leads to something else. At each time, there’s a decision. Do I go farther in? Do I change direction? Do I back out? At each subsequent decision point, you have different information available to you, so the decision is different. You may have learned something from a previous experience. You may have learned that you think you learned nothing valuable from that experience. But you learned something, and that something informs your constancy or changing.

Even as I’m saying this, I’ve noticed how my last couple weeks have been a roller coaster of sometimes feeling like I really need to change things and sometimes feeling like everything is just right where it is. This has helped me realize that there will likely be opportunities for change, but I don’t need to change in order for me to be ok. In fact, even when I change, there will still be times when I don’t feel ok. That’s the nature of life, so it’s not necessary to put all that burden of changing on myself.

Sometimes the change is about responding to the world, and that’s enough change. Sometimes there’s a draw that aligns with what we think is our “core.” I know enough now to know that even that which I think aligns with my core has difficulties. And sometimes those difficulties are because of the alignment with my core — because I care deeply about those things that align with my core. So doing that “dream job” doesn’t get you out of the bad times. In fact, it may magnify the bad times, because you care so much.

It’s been a tough process to unpack all this, so I hope that this might be helpful to someone in their journey through life. It’s quite the ride!