On Kindness, Truth, and Contentment

Truth is a deep kindness that teaches us to be content in our everyday life and share with the people the same happiness.
Kahlil Gibran

Truth a deep kindness? What in the world? I would have never thought of describing truth in this fashion! What I’ve heard about truth is that it is what the church tells you it is, or maybe what the newspapers print or the newscasters announce, or what one discovers doing research or by torturing the enemy. I had a professor at the university that accused his political enemies of believing that they had “the truth grabbed by the tail” when it was obvious to anyone listening to him that he was the one that “had it.” Truth, it seems, is something to argue about, something to control, or something pá darle a alguien por la cabeza (to hit someone over the head with). But a deep kindness? How can that be?

As a matter of fact, I recently had a very difficult conversation with someone I love very much because I made a statement of a historical fact, a truth if you will, and she took it not simply as an unkind statement, but as defamatory and unfair. Any “truth” that makes her look bad or undermines her fragile self esteem is not to be stated under any circumstances or else. How can stating the truth under those particular circumstances be anything but unkind?

During the last few weeks I have been experiencing a very peaceful and kind truth and perhaps reflecting on this experience may help us intuit what KG is trying to share above. I have recently faced two sides of one “truth”: I am very unhappy living with my husband, and I am very happy living on my own. I could say that the first part is an unkind truth because it focuses on all the things that are wrong in my marriage, like my hypercriticism of my husband’s inhumane working style and his neglecting our relationship in favor of his profession. Dwelling on it makes me angry and bitter and uncharitable. The other part of the same truth is that I am very much at peace in my own company, not worrying about things I can’t control, eating when my body needs to, sleeping long and peacefully, discovering parts of me I had never had a chance to relate to, focusing on the present and not the past or the future. This is a very kind truth because it makes me smile when I dwell on it, and who can be mean or ungrateful while smiling from the heart? It’s a truth that makes me a better, healthier, happier, kinder person, and much nicer to relate to.

Kahlil Gibran’s statement may be easier to interpret in the context of the parable it was included in. There is a difficult and delicate paradox there: on one hand “Truth is a deep kindness that teaches us to be content in our everyday life and share with the people the same happiness,” yet “it does not disclose its desirability except to those who first feel the influence of falsehood.” In my case, I thought I was living in the toxic context of a negative truth: “my husband loves his work more than me.” In reality I was living a lie: “I need to sacrifice my life and happiness in order to make this marriage work.”

I had to discover the falsehood of that statement before I could embrace the profound and kind truth that life does not have to be miserable, that there is no real marriage if there is no intimacy, that it’s better to be alone than in bad company, that there is joy in being one’s best friend. It’s a truth that makes me happy in a much smaller and less luxurious home, eating simpler meals, going down the stairs to walk my dog instead of letting him out the door a few times a day, making time for lovely people in my life, being glad to see my husband when we choose to meet instead of getting angry because he’s late again, being happy instead of depressed. It’s a truth and a joy that I am happy to share!