Quid est Veritas?

May has been a busy month with several road trips to assist in caring for grandchildren in between my working days at the hospital. I am grateful for good health and strength to keep up with this schedule. Last week my intuitive three year old granddaughter asked me honestly, in the direct manner of small children,

"Nana, are you old or are you a little bit old?"

The question came in response to her observation that I was unable to run. Her default locomotion speed is a full run.

Unfiltered "little bit old" Nana birding in Ottawa where mosquitoes outnumbered birds exponentially!

Her question has caused me to contemplate the meaning of truth. We often try to deceive others, as well as ourselves, in regards to what we really are. We may not like our own photos because they do not reflect how we see ourselves. We avoid looking in the mirror or standing on the scale in an effort to avoid the truth that we are older, greyer, more wrinkled, fatter, and flabbier than the idealized internal image we carry of ourselves. We want others to think well of us and our tendency is to get defensive when others reveal the truth about our character. When I had a hip replacement in 2018, I obtained my medical chart from medical records as I wanted to know the details of my assessments and treatment. The anesthesiologist who did my preop assessment wrote that I was "a 63 year old woman who appears her stated age". In my mind, I was a 63 year old who appeared younger than her stated age. 

Truth can be hidden, stretched, rationalized, underrated, and denied. No wonder Pilate asked Jesus his famous question in John 18:38, 

"Quid est veritas? or What is truth?" 

Facts are objective and can be proven, while "truths" are often filtered subjectively through our belief system, culture, and experience. Michelle Good is a Canadian Indigenous author in her mid-60s who recently published her debut, award winning novel called Five Little Indians. According to this article, she "traces the intersecting journeys of a group residential school survivors in east Vancouver as they work to rebuild their lives and come to grips with their pasts." In this interview she says of her fictional story, 

"A thing need not be factual to be true"

The parables of Jesus in the New Testament are a good example of how truth was communicated in a story-telling manner. The parables were sometimes hard to understand and are still open to various interpretations. Jesus deconstructed the religious traditions of the Pharisees and reimagined their views of truth. 

Back to my granddaughter's question...

"Yes",  I told her, "Nana is a little bit old and she cannot run like you." 

There was no need to lie as she already knew the truth. 

Later we were looking at an interactive flannel book with scenes and characters from various Bible stories. I told the stories and placed the characters where they were meant to be on the pages. But the imaginative little Miss P decided she preferred her version of Daniel in the Lion's Den where he had a conversation with Joseph in his coat of many colours and then ended up with the angel in the mouth of a lion. 

Quid est Veritas?!