Truth. It’s hard to say it, and hard to hear it. Sometimes it takes all my energy just to think it. But I never want to be without it.

I’m in my mid thirties. I’m not an old man, but I’m not a young man either. I am, for all practical purposes, decent, honest, compassionate. I’m good people. But I’m in my mid thirties, and by now I’ve looked at myself long enough to realize that I am a natural born, inveterate liar. It’s not that I like lying. Lying mortifies me. The thought that I’d have anything to do with lies is a painful thought to me. But there it is. I am a born liar because I was born a creature for whom the truth was alien. Its like not having opposable thumbs. The truth seems slippery; it slips away, leaving me fashioning my own reality out of the warm, comfortable clay from which I sprang.

I have only ever encountered one person who was totally, naturally and completely aligned with the truth. He kept saying things that were hard to hear. I don’t know if they were hard for him to say. I know he went through some difficult times for being so truthful. And the things he said were generally so peculiar. They tended to catch people off guard, and make them think about difficult questions. Not just any difficult questions, either. Usually his topic of conversation raised the most difficult question anybody had to answer.

People reacted to this truthfulness in different ways. Some people flat out hated it. They hated him, and everything he ever said. I guess, in a way, that’s kind of understandable. Or it would be if not for the fact that everything this guy said was purely and simply the truth. Not trivial, irritating truth which grinds your nerves to powder. Not handy truth that he snatched up like a skewer at an opportune moment. No, at every point when he spoke, he said the truest possible thing. Even when he asked questions they were the truest questions; that is to say, they were the questions most able to serve the cause of truth.

Some people liked his truth dealing, but most of those people just enjoyed seeing other people wriggle. They had axes to grind, and so they kinda liked it when this truth-talking guy would ask somebody else an uncomfortable question –pardon me the uncomfortable question. But the bottle spins around and around, and eventually it stops on you. Then you wriggle. And explain. And prevaricate. But the truth, once it latches onto you, does not let you go.

I want an appetite for truth. I don’t want to be adept at using the truth to get what I want, I want to be a connoisseur of the truth. I’ve wanted this for quite a while now, and I can tell that I’ve started moving in that direction. Not, mind you, that I’ve ceased being a natural born, inveterate liar. I have a long ways to go. But I can tell I’m on my way –not because the truth doesn’t hurt me as much; if anything it hurts more now– but because I like that pain, I welcome it, it is a good pain.

And that’s what this web journal is about: I want to talk about truth (and talk the truth) with other people who like truth. So here are some ground rules.

1. In the movie Fight Club, the wild guy played by Brad Pitt established a first and primary (and primal) rule: “The first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club.” Obviously such a rule would be silly if applied to a truth club. And so I’ll adapt that rule: the first rule of truth club is you do not fight about truth club. Anybody who’s interested in harranging, ad hominem wringing of rhetorical (or otherwise) necks is interested in something besides saying the truest thing that could be said. The most painful insults carry a grain of truth, and in this club, a grain just won’t cut muster. Naturally there must be some discussion and some give and take. But there is a fence, on the other side of which is scraggly crabgrass with patchy, brown spots which spell out the word “abusive.” Stay on this side of that fence.
2. The second (and last, I believe) rule of Fight Club was “Everybody fights.” That is so true. And while we’re not going to fight, this sentiment of exhaustive participation is a good one. So in truth club, everybody tells the truth.
3. Broad, grand, sweeping rules aside, there is a more practical rule: speak carefully. This is not a forum for a tell-all society. It has been my experience that the most titillating, scandalous true things one could say are almost never the truest things one could say. It will require a great deal of introspection to know just what to say. At the same time, be forbearing of others. Be aware that we are all amateurs at telling the truth (except for that one guy who always said the truest thing). Be prepared for other people to tell the truth badly (that sounds so euphemistic!). Cut ‘em some slack. Chances are you’ll need that lattitude yourself at some point down the line.

Oh, I forgot one thing about the truth. I spoke about how it makes us uncomfortable, but that’s not the whole truth about the truth. The reason I like the truth as much as I do is because I’m completely convinced that the truth is, ultimately, good news. The pain we feel from it is the pain of change. The truth shows us that we must change or die. This fact can be so painful that it feels like dying. But the change is a good thing. We lose one image of ourselves, of who we are and why we are important, and for a terrible, cosmic moment we are naked, worthless, meaningless. But in the next moment the whole truth is revealed and we find that we had completely the wrong idea about ourselves. We thought we were mighty boulders of granite, but the truth sweeps aside our illusions and we see we are miniscule and covered in mud. The truth keeps on, however, and the mud is washed away. We see in the end that we are not boulders, but diamonds. I believe this is true about me, and I believe this is true about you.

–lom