TRUTH
Not long ago a monument to Truth was placed in the city.
It's appearance, however, was not what anyone might have expected. It was—to say the least—surprising to everyone and offensive to almost everyone.
But the circumstances that led to its creation were not so widely known, and even less appreciated.
It began when a young artist (brimming with youthful idealism) was strolling through the park with his friend and mentor.
He noticed a couple walking along, arm in arm, or holding hands, or perhaps they were involved in some sort of embrace. I don't recall the precise details.
But whatever their grasping clutching hugging mode, the young artist arrived at the conclusion that they were in love, and did not hesitate to make a comment about it.
His friend, older and wiser, roughened by the sandpaper of real life, did not concur.
"How do you know he's not fucking her sister?" he asked the young artist, "or that she's not fucking his brother, or his best friend?"
"What? There is no way. You could never convince me that that woman is fucking that man's brother. Just look at them."
"Looks are deceiving, my young friend, especially with human beings. Yes, they do appear to be in love, I will admit. But when it comes to the human animal, you have no way of knowing what unspeakable truths they are hiding from each other.
What do you really know about them? Have you ever seen them before? If you had the time, and the power, if you could be the proverbial fly on the wall, you would be surprised, and I mean dreadfully, even painfully, surprised at what you might learn about their true selves, or what we might call their real lives, as opposed to the lives that are on display out here in this public park.
But take a look over there. Do you see those two dogs? See how they're sniffing at each other? Whatever else we might want to say about a couple of dogs sniffing each other's asses, once we get past the smugness that we might feel because we do not engage in such behavior ourselves, we have to admit that we cannot even begin to imagine the possibility of any deceit going on with them."
The words of the mentor struck the young artist profoundly. He thought about them deeply. In fact, he could not stop thinking about them, because he endured some personal experiences of his own with which to cement the whole thing together.
By the time he hit his thirties, the Statue-to-Truth was thoroughly and irrevocably cast in stone in his mind.
And before he finished his thirties, he had also finished his sculpture, boldly, and brashly, dedicated to that noble human idea we call "truth." Hammered in steel, it depicted a couple of stray dogs sniffing each other, in the way that such dogs are inclined to do.