"Yes", I said to my friend in a playful jest, "There are many truths. They come in abundance and are as varied as the the facets of life itself, but don't confuse that with truisms; those things we want for or wish were true."



He said to me with a sly smile, hoping to goad me into another philosophical debate, "But isn't truth relative? Isn't it just as realistic to say my interpretation of truth

is just as correct as is any other observation?"



"Ah! But there in lay the crux of the matter." I retorted, seemingly smug, but really only hoping to act as a mediator for what I knew was the rational, "Would you think that the truth is subjective, left only to interpretation or to the whim of the will? Would you think that for what ever you would believe the truth to be, that it would continue beyond your nature, or even your intellect? Is the truth so malleable that it can change with the seasons or be plucked like fruit, nourishing one day and rotten the next?"



My friend looked at me as if I had insulted him, as if I had taken his credibility away. He nodded at me then, as if I had put to question all the unquestionables, placing a dark doubt insultingly upon the light of our conversation, and then he glanced away, distracted.



Outside the window of our quaint secular seating within this midtown pub, a fight broke out between two groups of young people, arguing over some sporting event. With their faithful Alma Maters emblazoned across their perspective garb, one young woman was vehemently accusing another young woman of deviant and vile sexual indiscretions, while boisterous and drunken 'boys' cheered and jibbed at the combatants.



My friend, finishing his beer and reaching for his jacket, smiled at me, stood up, and walked outside to light a joint and watch the spectacle of inebriated youth. I paired up next to him, taking the joint from his fingers to put to my mouth, in a long drawn out puff.



"You see", I said from behind a large cloud of thick blue smoke, "there is your truth, non-subjective and unadulterated."



He laughed at me while snatching back his stolen joint, and then with a bloviated exhale he retorted, "What fucking truth do you see in that shit?"



"The ultimate truth of course", I replied, as I made for another deep inhalation of my friends joint, just before the police came upon the scene. "As long as we pretend and make up reasons to 'separate ourselves from one another', whether it is sports or politics or religion, we are living a lie, self imposed, one that we can't reconcile."



"Yeah? So What? What does that have to do with truth?



Truth is, none of this needed to happen, but it did.