The Value of Simple Truths

Young folks these days love to “diagnose” the world around them. Their parents, their friends, even themselves. The language of psychology has seeped so deep into everyday chatter that it spills over onto social media. Words like "co-dependent," "dysfunctional," "trauma response," "projection," and "gaslighting" roll off tongues as easily as if they were born knowing them. But it makes you wonder—how much of this talk is truly helpful, and how much of it is just noise in the wind?

Not everyone has the gift of eloquence, the ability to pluck just the right words to frame their experiences. I used to think that this absence of language might keep people from truly grasping their own lives, that without the right words, the truth of what happened would slip through their fingers. And to some degree, I still believe that. Yet, I’ve been surprised time and again by the people I’ve met. They aren’t poetic like John Steinbeck; their vocabularies are small, and they might not know a single scrap of that psychobabble. But with plain, simple sentences, they manage to capture the essence of profound truths.

An aunt once remarked, “Jisko jab jana hai, wo likha hai. Na ek minute pehle, na ek minute baad.” (The time when someone has to leave this world is written. Not a minute sooner, not a minute later). Such words come easily from the lips of the old. It’s only recently that I've begun to find solace in these plain truths.

You see, growing up, I stumbled into a trap—a trap that ensnared most folks of my age and still keeps many caught in its jaws. We have a way of believing something true only if it’s wrapped in poetic beauty, or if it stands firm on the crutches of science. We buy into it if it carries the weight of philosophical depth or if it’s crafted with a twist that makes us say, “Gotcha!” It’s as if we need these embellishments to validate what we hold to be real.

Young folks get a kick out of thinking they’re wiser than the rest, often by echoing what they believe to be sharp reasoning or by repeating some snappy line they’ve picked up—be it from a book or a passing conversation—that challenges the old, straightforward truths. They parade these clever snippets as if they were revelations, dismissing the simplicity of less argumentative, old-fashioned truths. Examples of some of these glib sentences that once enticed each of us are:

Everything is subjective; there are no objective truths. All systems are completely corrupt because they are predicated on power. Marriage is just a piece of paper on which two people have signed. Parents are just a means through which life enters the world. Capitalism is inherently exploitative. All relationships are transactional. Societal norms are always oppressive. Belief in God is a coping mechanism and religion is just a means of social control. Everything is a social construct.

Most young folks I’ve known have held on to at least a few of these notions at some point. For many, these ideas seem to cover the whole breadth of their beliefs. My advice to them would be to do as I did: Chuck out the whole lot, and start thinking from scratch. Even a blank slate would be better. 

“He who knows that he is profound strives for clearness; he who would like to appear profound to the multitude strives for obscurity. The multitude thinks everything profound of which it cannot see the bottom; it is so timid and goes so unwillingly into the water.” - Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science.