The truth is a double edged sword. It can kill and at the same time, it can save. One somewhat interesting thing about the truth is that you don’t know how it will turn out. A few months ago, my supervisor scheduled a meeting for the first week of resumption. Usually, students don’t resume until the second week of resumption. This is because no serious work is done during the first week. Most lecturers won’t show up until the second or third week. My supervisors warned us that everyone must be present. My supervisor is a very strict person; the kind of person who stands by her words. So when she said so, we knew she meant every bit of her warning.
I resumed very early so I wouldn’t miss the meeting. Most of us resumed early, except one person. She had an excuse. She couldn’t resume to school yet because she wanted to stay one more week to make more money. We had a group where we communicated. On the group chat, she asked for our advice; whether to tell our supervisor the truth; that she would miss the meeting because she wanted to stay back to make more money (she was broke) or if she should tell a lie and make her excuse more valid. We all told her to go for the latter. Our supervisor isn’t the kind of person to accept flimsy excuses, so we told her to lie. But she didn’t. She told her the truth and to our surprise, our supervisor agreed. The truth can set you free, just like it did for my coursemate. On the other hand, I have also been in situations where I told the truth and still ended up getting punished.
The truth is beautiful, and at the same time, it can be painful. For this week’s prompt, the Real Talk community asks us an interesting question; Is it better to know the truth even if it hurts. Sometimes, some things are better left unknown. Sometimes, it is necessary to stay away from the truth for good reasons.
During my years in the university, I had many crazy experiences. I am the kind of person who gets people to follow me easily, especially during exams. Most people follow me for the benefits attached to it. When I was in 400 level, I heard rumors about myself. Someone whom I thought didn’t have an issue with me, talked about me with another person and said awful things. I wasn’t there when they said these things, it was only a rumor I heard. Something pushed me to confront the person and find out the truth if they really shared awful things about me. However, I thought about the whole situation all over again and asked myself some questions.
If I found out the truth about this person, what would be the next step? How would I feel? What would be my reaction towards the person? For some reason, I decided to let everything go and pretend like everything was well. It was during exam period and I didn’t want anything to distract me. If I had confronted the person or made extra efforts to find out the truth, and then I realized everything I heard was true, that whole thing would have distracted me. Sometimes, the truth is better left unknown, at least for the time being. At the time, I felt it was best not to know the truth.
Yes, the truth will set you free. However, there are times when we need to stay away from the truth for a particular period, whether it is for our mental health or happiness.
Image in this post is mine.
Thanks for reading.
