I have been mulling over the idea of “inside / outside” and how people interpret that into their lives. Is the fusion of the two kind of a working model for our lives? How does what’s inside effectively play itself into the who we are on the outside?
This may be a horrible admission to make but I am coming to believe that there are many angles to truth. There is the black and white, I get that, but then there is the expansion, such as how to best answer the question, “what did you do this evening?” If I respond I ate dinner or I went to the Legion of Honor to hear a string quartet play, both are true. But really, when someone asks the question they don’t want a minute by minute breakdown of your evening. And so you give them the piece of truth that pertains to what you think they most would be interested in. Or not. Let me know if you disagree. I welcome your thoughts, either in favor or contrary to the ones posed above. Cheers.
i feel like we’ve had a conversation before that was similar to this, but focusing specifically on the ‘outside’ in a sense. that is, dressing for particular crowds. despite one’s style, there are certain ‘codes’ or ‘appearances’ which help us fit into one crowd better than another. for example….let’s say you’re going to go see your favorite hipster band play in some dive bar on polk. what are you going to wear? bright pink sundress? no. you’re going to wear black, layers, funky hat and probably your kickass boots, right?
so…one part of the outside/inside idea comes from wanting to either blend-in or make oneself accessible to a certain crown – depending on the situation. thus giving a particular bit of truth about yourself to a particular crowd. even though i love the color hot pink, i also love black. even though i like sugar-pop music, i also like hipster-alt-rock. we all have many facets to our personalities, usually.
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however…if you want to get into a discussion about ‘abolutes’ and absolute truth…well, that is a different animal, i think. i think this probably dives deeper into the grey and only in very specific areas does abolute truth come into play (politics, faith, the ‘big issues’) but even then…what’s absolute to someone is always going to be relative to someone else.
my 2 cents. for the moment 🙂