Cemetery Truth

   Okay, there is something kind of creepy about 'the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth'.
   I say this because I don't believe any of us actually want to be weighted down by the truth. The whole truth, that is.
   Here is an example of what I mean by the 'whole truth'.
   I drive past a couple of cemeteries on my way to and from work each day. I was stopped in traffic once beside one of these cemeteries and found myself gazing out over it. There were hundreds of headstones, many pathways, and beautiful shrubbery. All in all, a pretty landscape. My imagination, however, kicked in while I was sitting there and I started to picture what I actually would be looking at if there was no grass, no dirt, no trees and no shrubs, if somehow all those things were invisible. I realized I would be looking at thousands of caskets, just suspended there. I then imagined what I'd be faced with if those same caskets were invisible. I would be looking out over a sea of decayed or decaying corpses. That is the 'whole truth' I am talking about.

   I suspect that, if we were faced with this particular 'whole truth' on a regular basis, most of us would find a way to avoid driving past cemeteries. Ever.
   This,then, is what I mean when I say 'truth', in this blog.
   It's not just cemeteries. I am sure there are vegetarians out there who looked down at the meat they were eating and realized what the truth of it was simply by going backwards to the cow. In between the live cow and the dead meat there were a million other truths as well while that steak made its way to us. The server who brought it to us or the butcher at the supermarket or the cashier who rang it in all have their own truths and, in a truthful world, we would know what those are. We know what they are thinking, where they've been, and what went on in their bathrooms this morning. We know what their hopes and aspirations are, we know what their plans are for the rest of the day. We know what their fleeting thoughts about us are.
   What would it be like going to work in a truthful world? How much more difficult would it be to function there if you knew what your co-workers were thinking about you. No, what they were REALLY thinking about you! How much altered would your work life be if you knew that no-one there trusted you? On the other hand, how might things change if you knew that the majority of the company's employees thought you were a top-notch worker? What if you knew one of them hated you? How would it be different if one of them was in love with you? I'm thinking that it would end up being almost impossible to work there, anymore.

   If the concrete in high rise apartment buildings was invisible what would you see, looking up? A little bit of everything, I imagine, most of it boring and likely a lot of it would be stuff you didn't really want to see; people going to the bathroom, taking out the garbage, vacuuming, having sex, beating on each other, and on and on. Much of it, I suspect, would be people just sitting there in front of one screen or another, ruminating. Or worse.
   I occasionally (constantly) find myself stopped in traffic, surrounded by people in cars on all four sides. It's hard not to wonder where they're headed and why. Sometimes I find myself wondering at the sheer numbers of them. I often try and imagine what kind of a mood they're in and what disasters or triumphs have recently occurred. I assume that in the vast number of fellow drivers I've had the occasion to share a stoplight with there were one or two who had just committed a crime, another two or three who were about to, several who'd just received a cancer diagnosis, a few who'd just been proposed to, some on their way to brand new jobs, some who'd just been been fired, a handful who were on their way back to get that thing they'd forgotten, some who were driving for the first time and some who were driving for the last.
   Were we to know all these truths, how easy would it be to sit there at that light and simply wait for it to change? Probably not very.

   So I am thankful for the dark earth and the green plants in cemeteries and I am thankful for the impenetrable concrete in buildings and I am thankful for the steel in my car which shields me from its machinations and I am thankful for the thousands of miles between me and starving children and I am thankful for occasional blank stares and forced smiles. They all help me get from here to there and back again.