Literally Figuratively

Have you noticed lately that the word “literally” has slowly morphed to mean “figuratively”, like when someone says, “I literally died laughing.” They did not actually die. They were speaking figuratively, but they used the word “literally”. This is not merely a common grammatical mix-up that has somehow become adopted into our language like “affected” and “effected” or “then” and “than”. This seemingly innocuous substitution is representative of how our collective mindsets have changed; we are now living in a figurative world, and this figurative world has become our new reality. The literal, the authentic no longer matters. The figurative is the only thing that is important these days. No one is interested in the facts, no one is interested in the truth, we are only interested in the narrative and the spin which only alleges a certain version of the truth.

Like literally and figuratively, the word “truth” has replaced the word “opinion”. The expression “speak my truth” has become mainstream. “Speaking my truth” makes no sense because if what the person is actually speaking is the truth, then the truth is universal, it’s for everyone, and not exclusively theirs. The truth would not be the truth if there were more than one version of the truth. There is no such thing as “my truth” which is separate from somebody else’s truth. If two people have two separate versions of the truth, they both can’t be considered the truth. “Their truth” is merely their perspective, their point of view, their opinion, but it is not “their truth”. That doesn’t exist. It is self-contradictory. But many people in our society believe that they have their “own truth”. And when they say, “my truth”, they are making the statement that what they are saying cannot be challenged or contradicted; you must accept it, or you are wrong.

Entrenching yourself into a position by saying “my truth” means that you will not listen or even consider another person’s point of view, which means “your truth” prevents you from discovering the actual truth because the best way of discovering the actual truth is to look at the thing in question from as many different points of view as possible, which those who believe they have “their own truth” never need to do.