The truth serum

I could not wait to get home today to jump on the trampoline. I am not a circus performer or a child. We’ve had the trampoline since June; we bought it for our son on his 4th birthday. We didn’t put it together until a few weeks ago, as we needed to cut down a tree, trim branches on another tree and pull up a bush in order to accommodate it.

When my son and I first discussed buying said trampoline I was very pregnant. He asked me whether I would jump on it and I told him I’d have to wait until baby sister was at least 6 weeks old. Well, baby sister is now almost 5 months old. I jumped on it for the first time on Sunday. He told me “I’ve been waiting for this day; I thought I would have to wait longer!”

It was so fun.

Having been a gymnast and a competitive cheerleader (oh boy, I did not want to disclose this much on this blog), I know my way around a trampoline. I have even been considering a training schedule leading up to trying to do something like a back handspring on it without causing some physical damage to myself. Since, these people do still need me to be physically able to go to an office and make a living.

I will be frank. There was one marked difference to this current round of trampoline jumping. I am not a doctor and never took anatomy and biology was my worst class in high school. However, I do attribute it to having two kids “naturally”, the last one being a nine pounder in a birth that lasted 2 hours and 45 minutes. Okay. It felt like my bladder was going to fall out.

The higher I jumped the more pressure I felt. My trampoline jumping, alas, only lasted for about 10 minutes because of the increasing pressure . . . okay, pain. So, I have to see a doctor about that. I told my son that I’d have to work up from 10 minutes on the trampoline, to have patience with me. He thought it was hilarious that I felt like I was going to pee when I jumped and when he asked me why, I gave him the same reason I just gave you. He took it as solemn truth.

A truth serum is used to obtain the truth from someone who is unwilling to disclose it. You know, like in spy thrillers. I don’t live in a spy thriller, which I think overall is a good thing, for me. Obtaining the truth from someone only works if they know the truth. But, even if they knew the truth, it would be sad, I think, to use the truth serum on someone you know or love. It would be sad because the “truth” that emerged would not really be yours and it would somehow be hurtful to the one subjected to the trial by truth serum. It would be like stealing the truth.

For a long time, I would use principles, like truth, as weapons against other people. After a whole lot of experimentation, I was willing to learn that the discipline of a principle like truth is for me and for me only. It ceases to become a principle when I use it to render judgment on others. It ceases to become a principle when I use it to make myself better or worse than anyone else. When I use truth for my own short-sighted ends, it ends up making me miserable.

I wish I could take a truth serum so I could force myself to disclose my own truths I keep hidden. But even then, if I knew the “truth” all of a sudden like that, I would reject it; it wouldn’t be my truth. It would feel like an alien hostile occupation. Like in the Matrix when that virus tells Morpheus that humans rejected a life without suffering; they were always pushing to wake up from it as from a dream. 

The truth is like a dance, like life, slowly unfolding itself. It has a life of its own, a good life. It comes from inside me but is not subject to me. It undoes me, any ambivalence lifts, my shoulders un-tense, I know. When my mind knows something, it’s always subject to ambivalence. But, when I really know something, my vision clears. The path is right there and though I may not know where it will take me, I now trust that it is somewhere full of wonder and delight.

Like a trampoline under a tree at the ripe age of 35.

*This was an assignment for Blogging 101* The featured image is Circus Performer by Edgar Degas. All works by Edgar Degas (1834-1917) are in the public domain.