©Elizabeth Watt

I’ve been paying a lot of attention to language lately—to the weight our words can carry. I’m enamored by words with nuances and multiple meanings; words that speak to much bigger ideas. True is such a simple little word, yet, as a directive for living our lives, it packs quite a punch. Truth seems to be a niggling problem for so many these days; lots of people getting into hot water over the absence of it in their lives.

Among its meanings: ‘in accordance with fact or reality, accurate or exact, real, or rightly named’, and, in relation to construction, ‘in alignment, balanced, in correct position’. I expected the word ‘straight’ to apply; it doesn’t necessarily seem to, nor did the word ‘right’ ever come up——interesting. True also can mean loyal or faithful, as in a true friend. Another definition I recently came across is ‘something lived in the moment; an expression of the individual’s connection to the whole.‘ A person’s life can be true——undistorted, balanced.

Truth will look different for each one of us. Seems we’re all working pretty hard at reinvention——‘trueing’ ourselves these days. For me, this takes the form of spending time in nature, in the studio and out in the world with my camera, in mindfulness, and in honest relation to others. At the end of the day, all are attempts to be true, to get at the truth, to get real. How about you?