tim gier

I used to think that Truth was something I could find “out there” if only I searched long enough, as if Truth was a thing to be discovered, the way one might discover a planet circling some distant star, as if Truth had an eternal form, some non-material substance – a contradiction in terms if ever there was one – some “thing” I could grasp and hold in my heart and head, if not in my hands, I used to think I could find it and then show it to myself and then to others and, seeing Truth, once and for all, therein I could also find meaning, find purpose, find something to believe in. I used to think that but no longer do, but still, I do not despair. Between the moment of birth and the moment of death lay an infinity of moments, like the infinity of points along a line, and in an infinity there are infinite possibilities – I am whatever I choose to be, and there are more choices than I have time to explore, and more time than I can conceive of – what would it be to be without time, to be lost in the nothingness that precedes birth, that comes with death – I am outside of time and trapped within it at once, at the same – time. Camus said it’s absurd, this reckoning with time, this acknowledgment of the boundaries that contain, define, delineate and free us – who could be more free than the man who knows with certainty the space he is in, the effects he can have, the limits of what he can do? The world confronts man because he confronts the world, and where consciousness is absent freedom is absent too.

The truth lies within, not without, but in knowing that Truth is not “out there” still, do not despair – is everything relative? is the truth within you a truth that is different than the truth within him or her or me? what will be the anchor for our lives, if Truth is not and cannot be?

Consciousness has no meaning without something of which to conceive, the subject needs an object which to apprehend – there must be an “other” if there is to be a “me” – I am nothing conscious without something of which I am conscious; without an object of my consciousness, there can be only a feeling mind – a mind that senses but not that senses something else.

This is the only truth, that we are not alone, although we are alone, and within our own consciousness if we seek a Truth that stands apart from you and I, then we are as good as lost in the deep darkness of a timeless space, rattling around in the debris of a big bang still burning. Meaning in life is the meaning we find by looking into the eyes of the other and finding ourselves, not in the imaginary world of universal values that we pretend to exist “out there”.

Live in your life, in this world, surrounded by others who are alive as are you, live the truth of the common experiences of experience itself, become the truth of being.