Modes of truth

Definition
Truth is telling things how they are. Not being deceptive and hiding your feelings. Truth is letting your true emotions show and telling people how you feel. Truth is the absence of lies. It plays a role in all healthy relationships. It can keep you out of trouble or cause trouble if the truth is harmful. Truth builds trust or destroys it. Many things in our society are based upon lies that sometimes the lines between truth and lies become blurred. People will believe what they want, so sometimes truth is irrelevant.

Classification
When many people think of truth, they think of the opposite of a little white lie. However, there are different forms of truth. It can be the opposite of a lie, but truth can also be your feelings. Telling the truth can mean enlightening someone or changing their opinion. You can even change your own opinion by opening yourself up to the truth and coming out of denial. Truth can be telling someone what they don't want  to hear or what they do. Truth can be good and make relationships stronger. It builds trust. Truth can also destroy trust if it come after lies.

Division of Analysis
Truth comes in many different forms and can involve many different things. Truth can be logical, ethical, even emotional. Sometimes telling the truth makes sense and it is necessary for the situation. Lies would just confuse people and make a mess of things. Other times, telling the truth is the right thing to do. It's immoral and in bad character to tell a lie or keep a secret. Emotional truth is often the hardest. It's hard to face reality and share your true feelings with other people or even acknowledge them yourself. The truth comes in varying degrees of importance and severity. It all depends on the people involved and the nature of the statements that must be made.

Example
My little cousins think that the truth is telling their mom when they spilled something on the carpet or broke a glass. They have to face the facts and risk getting in trouble because of the guilt that would follow after telling a lie. To adults who have experienced much greater forms of truth, a spot of grape juice and a few shards of glass seem insignificant, but this is the way truth starts. As children we view truth as the opposite of a lie and we tell the truth to escape guilt. As we get older, we do the same thing--tell the truth to escape guilt, but truth doesn't always come as the opposite of a lie. It gets much more complex as we experience much more complex problems. 

Compare/contrast
Usually, the difference between truth and lies is extremely clear, you can't tell a truthful lie. However, there are exceptions when the lines become blurred and it's not so easy to tell the difference.  I often wonder, is it a lie if you just don't share the truth? If you're not telling a blatant lie, does it count? Whether it is lying or it isn't, I think it's clear that not sharing everything you know is not the truth. Really, it is up to the people involved in the situation to decide. Truth builds trust and lies destroy it, but if the lie has already been told, sometimes it's hard to know if it's worth telling the truth or not. Sometimes truth and lies are antonyms. Other times, they go hand in hand.

cause and effect
Telling the truth can have many different effects depending on the situation. Truth is the causation of trust. It can build it or destroy it based on the context of the statements made, how the truth is found out and what the truth is. If two people are truthful from the beginning of a relationship they'll most likely be successful, therefore, by causing trust, another effect of truth is stable, lasting relationships and mutual feelings of happiness between friends, family and people in general. On the other side, truth is caused by a few different things, may it be guilt, strong morals and values and the overall feeling of wanting to do the right thing.

Narrative
Telling the truth seems to be a problem for many children, but it was especially hard for me. When I was in first grade I had one of my most memorable troubles with the truth. My class was working on the computers for reading. I was sitting next to a boy named Josh. Josh was having trouble getting on his computer and kept tapping me on the shoulder annoyingly to help him. Not wanting to get in trouble for talking, I politely ignored him and continued working on my assignment. Josh persisted with the shoulder tapping and I got very angry. I slowly looked around, made sure the teacher wasn't looking, reached over and gave Josh a huge pinch right on the back. Causing him to cry and tell on me. When our teacher, Mrs. Reineke asked for my side of the story, I told her that I never touched Josh and he had been bothering me since the beginning of reading. Not believing me, Mrs. Reineke asked Josh to lift up the back of his shirt, and sure enough, there was a bright red mark in the middle of his back. I got sent to the pricipal's office for hurting another student and lying about it. If I had chosen to tell the truth in that situation, the amount of trouble I got into probably would have been less severe and they wouldn't have called my parents.

Process analysis
Something has happened that you're not quite proud of. You know that if people find out about it, their opinions would change or you may be in trouble. You know that owning up to whatever you did is the right thing to do and people would at least respect you for admitting it, despite the action. Without the truth, trust will be destroyed and your relationships you've worked so hard to build won't be the same. Finding the courage to tell the truth is an internal struggle that we all go through, even though we know that it needs to be done and nothing good comes from lies. The truth may not be a nice thing to hear and it may not protect your feelings, but it is necessary. If you end up doing the right thing and owning up to the truth, that respect will be there and the impact of the truth may not be as significant because it was told right away and is therefore less harmful. However, if the truth is something that should have been told long ago, that respect and trust cannot always be salvaged.

Argumentative/persuasive
What's the opposite of truth? Lies. Our society has a lot of these and I don't like that. One of the things we do in American culture is lie to our children at a young age. Santa Clause for example. Why is it necessary to have kids thinking that there is an obese man, dressed in a red suit with white hair that delivers presents via flying deer on Christmas? What parents should be doing is telling their children the truth from the beginning. If much of what a child believes is based on lies, they are going to grow up thinking it's ok to ignore the truth; that it's not necessary. Santa Clause is not the only example. What about the Easter Bunny? The stork? Kids are smarter than that and should be enlightened with the actaulity of situations and the real meaning behind holidays. Starting children out with truthfulness as one of their main values and ideals will create a better, trustworthy and safe environment for everyone. The presence of truth can only help our society grow as a whole. We can do many things to insert truth into our lives, but the most significant way we can do so is stop lying to children about things that seem harmless and fun. It's where it all begins.

description
Sally didn't know what to do. She immediately got that sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach when she heard  the initial crash as the vase hit the floor and then the scattering of glass as it shattered into thousands of tiny pieces. Once the shock of what had happened sunk in, she dashed to the kitchen and grabbed the broom. Sally frantically swept up the shards of destroyed glass and deposited them into a garbage bag, which she stashed in the garage. As her mom came home she sensed something was out of place. Mom said "Sally do you know what happened to my vase?" Sally was at a crossroads. She could lie and say she didn't know anything, but the guilt would be torture. Sally's moral instincts kicked in and she calmy explained what happened to her mother. The truth felt much better than trying to cover up what happened, and it turns out it wasn't as big of a deal as Sally thought. She would have been in much bigger trouble for lying about the vase. In the end, the truth is always the better option.