A phrase that begins as kindness ends as exile. "My truth" sets the speaker free of contradiction, but at the price of being unreachable. There is no longer anyone for me to disagree with, which is to say, no one for me to be in conversation with at all.
The phrase originated in genuine pain. People had been spoken over, dismissed, told their experience did not count. "My truth" was a reasonable demand to be heard. Then it migrated. It stopped meaning "what I have seen, which deserves respect" and started meaning "the only standard by which my claims can be judged." At that point, it stopped doing the work of being heard, because there is nothing to hear if every utterance is its own court of appeal.
Every utterance becomes its own court of appeal — and at that point, there is nothing to hear.
The price the speaker pays first
Soft relativism is usually defended as protection of the speaker from the world. It is, in fact, the speaker's isolation from the world. Once "my truth" replaces "the truth as I have seen it," the speaker has built a room with one door and no windows. They can say anything; nothing they say can be confirmed or corrected. The walls are very thin and very lonely.
The harder, kinder thing is to keep the older grammar. "I have seen this." "I think this is true." "I am not sure but here is why I lean here." Each of these submits the speaker to correction without dismissing what they have seen. Each preserves both the dignity of the speaker AND the possibility of being met by another mind.
The next time you are tempted to say "my truth," try the substitution. "What I have seen." Notice that you are still defended. You are still asking to be heard. But now you are also still in the world — a world in which someone could say, gently and without dismissing you, "I have seen something different. Let us think about it together." That sentence is the door out of the smallest prison.
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