It’s a line in an early draft of something a friend wrote and for some reason it’s stuck with me, even after the phrase ended up differently in the final version.

It reminds me of a discussion I had recently about objective truth.

Another friend was whaling on me for claiming “racism” without having proved it. I whaled on him back that I had no obligation to prove a feeling. To find the objective truth.

As I’m not sure there is such a thing.

Because there will always be the true and the false in everything.

As much as we might like to deny it, it’s all opinion. Real life is lived in shades of grey and that’s the truth. At least as I see it.

We almost always have mixed motives.
There’s what’s true on the face of things and the deeper truth,
and they are not always the same thing.

Dualities.

Some people are uncomfortable with shades of grey.
Especially those who have lived in the black and white.

We live a life of feelings, most of us.
And whether they are objectively true or not, they’re our truths
and we have every right to claim them.

You know those True or False tests we took in school?

They ought to have read True, False or Both.

Or maybe, a fourth category called Neither.