You Can't Handle the Truth

When I was in college (for the first time), no, no, no, before I went to college (for the first time), we had an orientation session. Most of us were just really getting away from our parents for the first time, and we had a BLAST!!  We cut up for the whole time. We stayed up all night, we ran through the hall, people smoked and drank…we were in college (for the first time).

One night we got out of hand and stuck the fire hose in the stairwell door. Stupid right? Right. The water flooded the 5^th floor, which flooded the 4^th floor, which flooded the 3^rd floor, and that wet a lot of the second floor. People lost a lot of stuff that week including clothes, food, radios, televisions... it was horrible. We all got in trouble in the meeting that followed the incident. Each hall was called to meet in front of their respective elevator…except the 5^th floor. The officials told us that they would find out who did it and that if they weren’t able to they would nullify our acceptance to the university indiscriminately. At that moment one of the guys stepped up and told the officials that he would say who committed the watery devastation. As the one actual security guard smiled and offered praise and thanks to the first time college student, the student screamed, “You can’t handle the truth!!!” I mean he said it just like the movie clip from A Few Good Men. It’s the one where Jack Nicholson said it. That, at the time, had to be one of the funniest experiences I had ever been a part of. Partly because of the look on the face of the officials, partly because it was so unexpected and unbelievable, and partly because he was not going to name names. We all slapped hands and laughed till we cried…everyone came back in the fall.

That quote has been voted one of the most memorable quotes of all times. I just looked it up. That explains why every so often my mind wanders off and I hear it in the distance. In the movie he (Jack) was telling a lawyer that he really didn’t want to know what actually happened...so of course this “got” me to thinking…..

You could probably take that quote, write it on a piece of tape, and strap it across the forehead of every human that has ever lived and breathed (except Jesus). I mean if we think about it, even those of us who have supposedly “matured” to the point where we demand blunt honesty, cringe and wiggle when the cold hard truth runs down our back like an ice cube with little needles on it. (lol...some people are mad already) The truth, the thing that everyone strives for, searches for, longs for, will hit you in the face like a recently fired cannonball; especially when it’s about you.

If it is human to err, it must be super-human to hear about it. The question becomes; how do you expect to better yourself? If we were actually able to achieve perfection, it would only be because we were guided by experiences, advice, and the truth. Because the path to perfection runs directly through improvement, there is no way around the truth on a path to becoming a better person. And because we should all be trying to be better people, we will from time to time have encounters with the truth.

We ramble through life taking actions and making decisions. Sometimes the results of those actions and decisions only affect us. They are little self-contained things that leave behind little collateral damage. The majority of the time, every action and decision we make has some bearing on another party. The actions we take and the decisions that we make are perceived in different ways. Sometimes they know exactly what we meant. Other times something gets lost in the transmission.

It is at those times where the you can’t handle the truth thing comes in. It becomes difficult to accept the negative impressions of what we have done and said negativity was not the intention.  We could always blame the other person for not listening or not understanding, or maybe even for being too stupid. Sometimes that actually is the case. I would say that more often than that we just don’t want to accept that we have done something wrong…especially when we were trying to do right. It is similar to a high ranking military official being dressed down by the president in the oval office. It is the discipline that keeps the officer in check well enough to listen and not speak during the process; not his desire to hear the information.

Because we don’t have the same strict code of discipline in society, we usually take issue during our own dressing down and block the truth from entering. Unless the person is a bald faced liar, we can really only judge our actions based on how they are perceived by others. There is no check list to make sure that actions and decisions are right. When we do or say something, the only thing that can confirm whether or not it was done or said right is the opinion of something or someone. Think of it as a test full of essay questions…you can write two pages about how stars look, but only the teacher can decide of the answer is correct. You could use great adjectives, but fragment your sentences. You could write perfect sentences, but go off on a tangent. You could describe the stars accurately, but not make the essay long enough. You could even do everything right and leave your name off of the paper and receive no credit.

When you are receiving a report from another person on the effects of your actions or statements, they are the teacher giving you a grade on your paper. The truth about it is, if we realize that it’s difficult to handle the truth, it will become easier to work with it.