The truth is too important to be tethered to just the facts as we know them.
Truth is very much like faith, you must see the Divine before it appears.
As the story goes:
Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr. was the child of famous aviator Charles “Lucky Lindy” Lindbergh. “Little Lindy”, as he was called, was stolen from his crib. An innocent baby. In the dead of night. On a farm in New Jersey. His parents sleeping peacefully in the next room. Using a makeshift ladder precariously propped up against a second story window kidnappers somehow silently entered the house and descended the ladder with baby in hand. The story has a horrific ending for Little Lindy whose body was found months later.
Unbelievable, yet true.
A few weeks later: The recently promoted New York Times CEO James Farraday siezed the Lindbergh opportunity for which he had been groomed. Farraday was in the business of turning catastrophes into corporate cash. Rising out of the (soon to be) smoldering ashes of the industrial revolution, Farraday was a great marketer. He knew how to sell a story and he knew how to craft a headline for maximum profit. In the 12 months after the Little Lindy incident, NYT profits rose 1100% and Farraday became a very rich man. The Times became world renowned as among the most highly circulated and reputable papers in the world. The stock price of the recently listed Times skyrocketed upwards on the New York Stock Exchange. His marketing techniques are still being taught in Colleges and Universities around the globe. The Grey Lady, as the New York Times became know, was the most profitable news outlet in the world. Little Lindy made Farraday very very wealthy.
Unbelievable, yet true.
A few days later in nearby Princeton, New Jersey, Obstetrician Dr. Robert Trudow was consulted by police about the kidnapping. He neglected his own patients for a chance at grasping his 15 minutes of fame. His understudy, the newly minted Dr. Bob Gufalski was all too eager to step in and help with patient care. A job, we will soon learn, he was not yet equipped to handle.
For an ailing Mrs. Jacobs and her throbbing nasal infection, this was a conflagration of rare and quite unfortunate events. Confusing the prescribed chamomile lotion with Admiral Tietze’s Narcoleptic Tiger Balm, the Doctor-in-training slathered a healthy dollop of the pungent elixir on the affected area. As the unconscious patient awoke to quite a surprise it was reported that Mrs. Jacobs’ yowl could be heard by even the most tightly bound and gagged kidnapping victims.
At the very moment Little Lindy was snatched – would it have been OK to shout from the rooftops “Little Lindy made me rich” -or- “That baby made my nasal passages tingle with the fire of a startled narcoleptic tiger”? Of course it would. Even though those events hadn’t occurred yet, their possible eventuality wasn’t any less true. Shouting any of those things would not only have been acceptable, it should be encouraged.
“Little Lindy” is a perfect metaphor for how we need to think about and use the truth. Is the kidnapped child alive or dead? No one really knows. Even as everyone hoped he was alive, finding him could only kill him, killing all hope along with Little Lindy. The unfortunate human equivalent of Schrödinger’s inevitably doomed cat.
Like seeking revenge, when seeking out truth you’ll be digging two graves: one for the truth and another for everything you ever wanted that truth to be.
The truth is a present not yet unwrapped. In the mind of the recipient, the gift inside is already known. Only the unwrapping can prove her wrong. The truth can be the very same thing, proving in one minute the new falseness of last minute’s truth. Mind = blown!
As a manager, you should leave that package wrapped as along as possible, leveraging how amazing, dangerous, or motivating the contents could be to everyone around. The truth is an arrow shot straight up into the sky. One minute it’s the beauty of form and function vanishing gracefully skyward into the distance. The next minute Jimmy has an arrow lodged squarely in his noggin.
Be the arrow piercing the clouds, not the gaping head wound.
You are now in the business of fluid truth – shortly before it lands on its eventual and unsuspecting target’s head. You need to ride the tidal wave of truth before the scorching sun of eventual reality evaporates all power from the moment and relegates truth’s static reality to a cracked, mud dried lake. Barren and useless. You must use the truth before it actually arrives.
Truth’s ultimate reward can mirror life’s reward. Both are more interesting and useful as a Journey, and not a Destination.
Let truth be the very point in time and space near the horizon where parallel lines eventually meet.
The truth is a pebble thrown into a large calm pond by someone standing on the shore. The initial event will ripple through, on and below the surface long after the rock was thrown.
To know the truth at the time the pebble was thrown is as preposterous as trying to stand at all points on the lake’s shoreline and absorbing every ripple simultaneously. It is literally impossible. Only the truth can do that. And yet, it cannot be done.
Invent and become the truth you need to see in the world before truth itself takes it away. And believe me, it will. Like a baby snatched out of the darkness of night, you must be the baby, the kidnappers, and the ladder.
The truth is complex. Non-linear. Ever-changing. Liquid. Tomorrow’s truth can reinforce today’s version of it – or destroy it completely. Perhaps, both. There is no way of knowing. Better yet, it doesn’t actually matter.
The truth is too important to be tethered to just the facts as we know them. The truth is now a tool. Leave the package unwrapped and the kidnapped baby unfound for as long as you can.
The truth can unfold fast and loose. Play it that way. Before the game ever begins.