truth

Tonight I went to the English service in Winterthur again, and here is a thing I learned that I think is cool. Apparently this comes from Heidegger, but my fact-checking has only gotten me as far as this random website, which I quote:

alétheia and truth: Alétheia is Greek for 'truth; truthfulness, frankness, sincerity'. Aléthés is 'true; sincere, frank; real, actual'. There is also a verb, alétheuein, 'to speak truly, etc' (cf. GA XIX, 21ff.). The words are related to lanthanein, with an older form léthein, 'to escape notice, be unseen, unnoticed', and lithe, 'forgetting, forgetfulness'. An initial a- in Greek is often privative, like the Latin in- or the Germanic un-. (The 'privative alpha' occurs in many Greek-derived words: 'anonymous', 'atheism', etc.) Aléthés, alétheia are generally accepted to be a-léthes, a-létheia, that which is 'not hidden or forgotten', or he who 'does not hide or forget'.

So truth, in this sense, is not a statement measured against some gold standard of reality, but instead means "the things we don't forget."

Which explains quite nicely why my truth can easily be different from your truth. Is in all probability different from your truth - and the more different our backgrounds, the more different our truths. Which isn't something we need to be upset about or educate each other out of (which won't work anyway, because what I remember from that education won't be what you remember!); it's something we need to be aware of. Less judgement, less condescension; more humility, more curiosity. Truth.