The Moments Following Being Outwitted By Lies
…after holding firmly to the ideal of TRUTH
Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash
I left the court room today about an hour and a half ago. I won’t get into the details of the case, as there are more to follow, but my partner and I lost a very strategic case that we believed would end the mental and emotional abuse that we were encountering from another person.
This has been going on for many, many months. I was not sure of how much more I would be able to handle. Lots of deceit and trickery, shocking behavior, and out right lies from someone that we have been stuck having to deal with on a consistent basis. Until today, there was some part of me that felt as though the truth would prevail. I started this journey of allowing a judge to decide how someone else’s behavior towards me would be defined with the full backing of our legal system. I essentially gave the judge, this external source, the power to decide my fate. I felt as though we had done all that we could, short of saying to this person, “Okay, I give up. Have it your way.” In order to avoid those two sentences we filed a lawsuit which we understood could have the potential to lead to more suits down the road. We just wanted to be left alone to live in peace and harmony without demeaning power struggles. And now we fear that because of the loss, things will escalate and we will have to deal with this person who will be considerably more hostile towards us. In other words they will be emboldened to add even more ammunition to their already overloaded guns… and because we have opened the door, there’s no other way to settle our dispute except by the mercy of a court system. You see, the ball is now in play by the other team and this loss has given them a home field advantage. Our intent, had we won the case, would have been to end it there. Mind you, we just want to live in peace and tranquillity. Now this whole thing has become an out of control, speeding locomotive with us tied to the tracks just around the bend. We had been set up by someone who has spent the last many months plotting against us without us seeing the complete reality of what was going on.
How could we have not seen it coming?
We were blinded by the truth.
I felt as though as long as we were honest that we would exude the conviction of truth and somehow the judge would recognize this and we would win the case. That is not what happened. We told the truth, which presented a weak case. The defendant lied MANY times which muddied the waters to the point of coloring our truth with uncertainty. We were left shocked. It was my first time ever having to take the stand. My truth was outwitted with a litany of lies and the defendant prevailed in the case.
Photo by Andres Simon on Unsplash
Defeat is not what I feel. I somehow know that it is impossible to defeat the truth. This is not a surface level understanding. We lost the case, but we haven’t lost our Souls. In the big picture, the “security” of winning the case is not even my reality. There’s truly nothing that can take this knowing away, despite any adversity, pain, or suffering that I’ve ever been through. This isn’t to say that I still maintain the high ideal of truth that I woke up with this morning. But, it is to say that my ultimate security lies in the core of my being which houses no such thing. In the core of my being lies
the “middleness”,
the “nothingness”,
the “emptiness”,
— take your pick here, even add your own word if you have one — and in this place security doesn’t exist; there’s no need for it. For me, in a broad sense, security suggests the resources to survive, and — in at least a moderate level of consistent comfort. I’ve made many decisions from a place of security and sometimes things haven’t turned out with whatever expectations I was hoping for, and yet I continue to bang my head up against the brick walls of it. There appears to be green light after green light building momentum and confidence of assured victory and somehow I miss the detour sign that points in the direction of a left turn. I continue straight forward with increased speed and enthusiasm only to wake up on the ground, knocked out from a nasty head injury.
So, what do I do with all of this TRUTH stuff? And what does that even mean in the context of the reality that I find myself in? I just lost a lawsuit that would have stopped someone from a continuing borage of harassment that has affected my mental and emotional well being for quite some time. This person clearly perjured themselves on the witness stand and was able to protect themselves from a loss. I never saw that coming. My idealism of the upholdment of truth was my brick wall. I’ve been picking up momentum for this day for decades, and here I lay on the ground. Still too optimistic to feel defeated, but wreaking from a horrible headache.
I get it…we live in a REAL world, not in the core of MY being. We need real things — food, water, shelter, somewhere to sit, somewhere to lay, jobs, money, vehicles, clothes…I could go on all day. All of those things provide security in the real world. Living without them is harsh, to say the least. We even need the truth in order to make beneficial decisions and to create bonds of trust in relationships. But what happens when we identify so heavily with anything that provides security, forming attachments, and loosing ourselves in the material possession or the value that we hold dear…and what happens when it’s taken away? What happens to our identity? Who are we then?
The attachment to security has left me without security…which doesn’t exist from within. It only exists externally. The truth is that the removal of the defendant from my life will not provide me with the security of peace and tranquillity. At least not for long, something else will eventually pop up. My parents will pass away, my car will get a flat tire on a road trip out of town, I’ll stub my toe in the middle of the night while trying to feel my way to the bathroom in the dark, someone else will outwit my truth with a lie and be rewarded for it in some way.
LIFE WILL CONTINUE ON
How will I respond? Will I continue to speed full force into more brick walls? Or will I just go with the flow of life and take a left turn here or there and say, “We lost the case, but we haven’t lost our Souls”?
Trusting that all is well because all is in the middleness.