The light of the candle flickered amongst the shadows around me; failing to illuminate what in daylight was clear. This candle was the only thing I had to protect me against darkness abounding. It felt threatening, maybe, but all the while comforting to know what it must have felt like in a time without electricity. The candle’s wick burned bright enough to shine against the wax falling on the book I was reading before me. Unbeknownst to me, while I sat alone in a dark room among the many in the house, candle wax fell on my book. “What a pain!” The wax was already fully settled onto the page of the unfortunate book which had to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. That exact reasoning felt correct; felt right enough to satisfy my admission of surrender to the wax. Sadly, the small splotch of wax had inadvertently caused irreversible damage to a sentence which I hoped to read. Upon attempting to decipher what remained of the sentence; I found that the entirety of that paragraph was at risk of being misconstrued or even worse may be used to lead one to false conclusions. Possibilities came furrowing its brow at me on a dark horse; furrowing its brow as it filled my mind with the chance that maybe, just maybe, I would forget something in that paragraph then have to read once again the sentence that had been dirtied from what it once was.
I sighed to myself thinking of a solution; this book was quite important to me I thought to myself. As such would be a shame if damaged, even a little bit was enough to ruin the entire paragraph, true in fact, very true. Even more tragic was when I realized that the stained sentence just so happened to be the only sentence where one could retrieve the name of the hero of the story. This would not do… Definitely not! How would I know who the protagonist is when their name was muddled beyond comprehension? Despite knowing the significance of the sentence; there seemed to me at the time that there was no rush to correct it. Sure, the information was erased, but there would always be others who have read the same sentence repeatedly to the point of a dedicated memorization, others who will be at a moment’s notice once an inaccuracy was found, at least that was what I thought.
The book went back into its shelf without another thought, stained. It is simple logic—simple, quickly conceivable logic—of the kind that could be slotted in without another qualm. Thus was born a nugget of lost information that could be filled in with anything I wanted, should the need arise. Whether I would fill it in with malicious intent or not does not matter. The truth has been erased by something, and another thing could fill it in to benefit themselves. After some time, Purple lightning flashed on the horizon, bringing with it the sound of rain pelting the roof. “Enough!” I said to myself, thinking no more of the book upon seeing the clouds in the night.
Alright, now back to reality. Complacency is dangerous in many situations, especially the type of complacency that leads to damning consequences in regards to the veracity of the truth, even more so when one is the culprit of such an inadequate capture of the truth. Not acting upon one’s good intuition, backed up by information and experience, is complicit in what can and will happen. In this situation, Galloping to the front lines on a steed built on brittle bones and a steed that wills itself not to fight will most certainly lead to catastrophic defeat. The denial of a truth through complacency and the implications constituent of the truth that can be peddled by those whose malicious intent seeks to replace it with a cancerous lie manufactured by their callous desire for power, status, money, anything! Is like walking off the face of the Earth with nothing more than space below. To equate lies with cancer in a society is putting it lightly.
People act upon the truth whether or not they realize it, and because of this, what we accept as the truth is vital to our actions. Truth is true, but it is upon the shoulders of the people to realize whether or not a cancer is spreading through what they believe due to the inconvenient facts that gave credence to the idea that truth is not resilient by itself alone. The wax that fell on the sentence mentioning the name of the hero of the story is only an inconvenience that can be undone; however, if I were to change the lost name to… someone else’s name, for example, if someone were to read the book without any other context, they would be led to believe a truth that hides the cancer of a lie. Once one or many accept a lie, then that lie will become the truth, but there will always be those who know better. Humans in history have always demonstrated that there will always be a tendency for someone to take advantage of an opportunity. This fact in and of itself is not malicious, but opportunity breeds interest, which in turn breeds progress. However, progress built upon an opportunity that presented itself after a lie was accepted as truth is nothing but flawed. To be able to distinguish truth from lies is not a talent but a skill that must be honed further beyond what would be considered normal because, in a time of misinformation, there is no truth in normality.
In summary, for those who question themselves in the same way I have questioned myself multiple times in the course of writing this short “thing”. “Truth is whatever people want it to be, and there is no hope because people will always do what they can to anything as long as it advances their cause.” There is a reason why I, as a conscious writer, put that in quotation marks. It is because there will always be different perspectives on this. Perspectives do not take away from the truth; rather, they serve to provide clarity, as perspectives are just different views of a singular truth that remains constant from any angle. A single perspective is nothing without its accompanying contemporaries. Finally, all of this is to forward the cause that wax must not replace words, complacency must not replace advocacy, and lies must not replace truth. Dear reader, especially to the one who soars aiming to walk off the earth, think twice, even thrice, when reading this piece as you can apply the ideas in this “thing” to your own agenda as I have. Have fun!
