There Are Three Sides to a Story. The Third Side is the Truth

It has been said that there are three sides of a story; yours, mine and the truth. Back in the days you'd probably have at most two lies, or should I say semi-truths to deal with and with some logic and some wisdom you can permute your way to the truth. These days though, there is this other side which makes the old equation more complex, it is so strong that it forces even its stories on us and make us our own stories, it makes us forget what we really care about. It is so bad that it goes as further to determine and force on us what stories should and shouldn't be seen as important.

Recently Akon launched a Solar Academy that will supply electricity to 600million Africans, something I've always wondered why people with means haven't thought to do because really it is a no-brainer project that is fantastic nonetheless. Same recently there was the sex change news about one man doing what he likes for himself and that news of little to no relevance to most of us bombarded us like we had no choice, while the good deed of one man for the good of millions of other people was overlooked.

News people must know something we don't really. They must have learnt something about humans most of us are in the dark about. The only scoop I have is the slogan "bad news sell". With every single day that passes, people keep get lazier and lazier and many can't be bothered about thinking. The spend their time mostly watching the life of hard-working people on TV making their money (eg. The Kadashians, oh you think they are for real? Sorry baby, there's nothing real about reality TV. Wait. I exaggerated. The scripts are for real baby). Little wonder why they do so many "crazy" things on tv; they do so to old attention of their audience.

It's #Media ;)

A photo posted by Alexander Asomba (@alexasomba) on Aug 14, 2013 at 1:21am PDT

We shouldn't let this other story tellers distort the truth we know or exchange what truly matters to us with fables.

Sorry I derailed there. So back to three sides of a story. Back in the days when my parents try to settle dispute amongst the kids at home lets say there's an argument or something of that sought, they'll ask for the two sides of the story, both sides will explain and our parent will be left to determine the truth and pass judgement as it were (they were usually wise and fair). Somehow they just succeed in finding out the truth about the matter and that becomes our truth; the third side of the story, their wise view becomes our truth. There's this funny part to that story though they were countless times were we couldn't tell or remember the cause of the argument and we'll look stupid because we just realised we have just wasted our time fighting for a cause we both don't even care enough about to even remember what it was. I mean who does that? Just there at that point in time our eyes get open and we realise that the whole thing was pointless from the start. That point when your parents help you see things with their wisdom is golden. Truth be told, they won't be there to that forever.

My point is, I believe our parents took their time to deal with that process each time they had to in order to teach us how to critically think things through and be able to discern quick enough if something is pointless.

The fourth side of the story which we have no control over is the media, usually it is not my side, your side or the truth it is just something else entirely and too often it bombards us with stuffs that are of no benefit to humanity, and sadly it is so powerful that it can make people stop thinking especially if it is popular opinion.

I believe it is best to take what the media says with a pinch of salt. True there will be times it might share something of value, appreciate and share but also consciously ignore every form of truth distortion and pointlessness it pushes at you.

Have a lovely week!

 

photo credit: We All Have A Story To Tell | (license)