No one is more hated that he who speaks the truth

‘’No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth’. Plato

My first ever memory is of me getting kicked out of nursery; my feet swinging as I sit on a chair as I, small (must have been 3 or so) listen to my mother being scolded by another adult on the ‘innocence of children’. I have brought a book in and have attempted to give a lecture to the other toddlers ‘on the actual way babies are born’. It was a children’s book not about sex but about science - it depicted the story and the journey of the sperm and the egg - all in children’s language and illustrations. My little lecture had upset the other toddlers and as such my mother had been called in to come and pick me up; I was never allowed to bring another book in. From this broken fragment of a memory, I remember three feelings: my incredible need and desire to speak about what I know to be true, that my desire to speak about what I know to be true is wrong and finally that there is something wrong with me – I am different than everyone else. 

All of this remains true to this day, Soraia aged 40: I still have this incredible desire to speak about what I know to be true, I still upset the other toddlers on the playground and I am still different than everyone else.

I didn’t know at this stage as my feet swing on the chair but it will be a torturous life I’m headed towards, a life filled with feelings of wrongness and otherness; it will be a lifetime of errors and mistakes and small insignificant triumphs in between - in essence it will be a non-life. I will breathe air but not live, I will exist but not live, I will survive but not live, I will work to live but not live, I will fall to my knees and bravely get up again only to fall again, but not live. I will search for the meaning of life but not live, I will dance but not live, laugh out loud but not live. And at one point scarred by tragedy I will attempt a final move towards living (in peace) - a Hero’s Journey.  

To say that my Hero’s Journey hasn’t gone according to plan would be an understatement. 

I now often wonder if the stakes were too high, whether peace is something that someone that has this burning desire to speak about the truth - and in my experience most people hate hearing about the truth at all - can ever truly find peace. And whether peace is a goal I should be trying to attain on planet earth at all.

Have you looked around you lately?

Homo sapiens just don’t like peace - we are a species that simply loves war. You want peace? Go to War.

We are a species that simply does not know peace, not with ourselves, not with others, not with planet earth, not in our daily lives, or careers, or relationships - we are a species at war with ourselves.