The Peculiar Illusion of Truth

     "I knew it."   

Looking toward where the voice was coming from, I saw it was directed at me.

     "Knew what?"

 His eyes were fixed on the image of a clover, low on the sleeve of my Notre Dame Fighting Irish t-shirt.  

     "You're the same guy."  "You still like those things?"

Processing this was taking some time.  I didn't know this kid.  Same guy...as who?  How did he know I still did anything?  And my shirt?  I didn't even remember where I got it.  Or why.  I was a Nebraska fan.  I suppose grouchy, ironed-on leprechauns fit my seventh-grade, post-Labor-Day sensibilities as well as anything else.  

     "What things?"

He didn't answer my question.  Not directly.  

But it wasn't the shirt.

     "The guy who always brought four-leaf clovers into class in fourth grade."  "You moved here from Iowa, didn't you?"  "Des Moines?"  "Same here!"  

My stare surely revealed the blankness behind it.  I'd never lived in Iowa.  Never seen him before.  The house I lived in then, was the same house in which I awoke before my first day of first grade, and the first days of every grade after.  Clover wasn't something I noticed.

I remember grinning at the bizarre specifics of his story, and at how earnestly he believed it.  Crazy.

     "You're thinking of someone else."  I was already walking away.  

     "Nope, it was you.  I can't believe you don't remember that."  

He said it as if it were something that occurred decades ago.  We were thirteen.  If I had lived in Iowa three years before, I would remember.  There was clearly a boy in Des Moines who liked clover leaves, but it wasn't me.

It would've been just an awkward exchange.  One I might've told my friends about, laughing, at football practice after school.  But I didn't get the chance.  He was on the team.  When I pulled myself off the ground after a drill, I was picking turf from my facemask.

      "Hey man, you should check that dirt to see if you can find any more of those four-leaf clovers."  

My previous amusement ratcheted up to serious annoyance.  Whether he had some kind of horticultural fixation, or was just reaching clumsily to make a friend, was no longer a concern of mine.  

     "It wasn't ME".  "I've never lived in Iowa, and I've never seen you before in my life."  "Stop with the clover comments, or find somebody else to bother."  It wasn't my finest demonstration of approachability.

      "Whoa man, sorry."  "You don't have to make a big deal about it."  

It didn't seem to me like I had been the one making deals of anything, big or otherwise.

      "Maybe it wasn't you."  "You sure remind me of whoever it was, though."   

With things seemingly settled, weeks passed without further talk of clover, or grade school, or Des Moines.  I had all but forgotten about it as I climbed into the passenger side of my dad's brown Oldsmobile one night after practice.  The figure appeared in my periphery at the same moment I heard the voice:

     "Hey!"  "It was you!"  "I remember you getting dropped off in that brown car in grade school!"

Through a well-executed plan of avoidance, I don't remember ever speaking to him again.

For all I know, he never believed me.  And I'm certain that in his mind, he was being genuine.  He just knew I was the kid he remembered from his old hometown.  And he was apparently certain I was intent on misleading him about our previously-in-common lives in Iowa.  Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary - such as the supporting testimony of everyone I knew - nothing I said or did could convince him his story was anything but fact.  Once his mind was made up, he saw his own truth in even the most random of occurrences.

Without realizing it, he was subject to a type of cognitive bias (which) represents an error of inductive inference toward confirmation of the hypothesis under study.  In real words:  The idea that what we think we know can be so powerful, that everything we see and experience appears to confirm it.  There's a term for it:  'Confirmation Bias'.

It's a concept very well known in research.  There is always concern that the results of any experiment might be colored by the leanings of the scientist.  The outcome skewed, as it is seen through the glass of what the researcher already believes.  It is evident in politics, where we are essentially forced to align with one of only two camps.  Once we subscribe to the mantra of one, anything put forth by the other becomes automatically false.  

It can be a hindrance in education, or employment, or in social settings.  Teacher and student, manager and employee, stranger and stranger unwittingly view each other through a filter dirty with years of experience, and begin to "know" what the other meant by his/her actions or performance, and respond by reaction, rather than in accordance with reality.

But more insidiously, we use this obstructed view to evaluate ourselves, our friends, our family.  And in this context, it can be crippling.  We begin to see failures as cumulative and defining.  Mounting evidence of what was once only suspicion:  That we don't do things nearly as well as everyone else.  It seems to validate the snap judgements we've made of people.  It's why the expression "first impressions are everything" has become commonplace and accepted.  There's truth to it.  But that truth indicates a flaw in our thinking - that we normally fail to overcome bias once established - rather than any real underlying value in the difference of a first impression over a second.

And when the pendulum swings the other way; when we are absolutely certain we're right, we are not only unwilling to concede anything to another, but we begin to develop the morally-superior delusion that we shouldn't.  We might come around, and give a little ground when we're clearly wrong.  But when we're right?  Well...we were raised better than that.  With a spine.  Standing on our own two feet.  Defending the hill.

Such unmoving resistance takes away all space for the other person to change.  It suffocates their efforts to put distance between themselves and the past.  Why, when it's been proven time and again that we will, regardless of circumstance, continue to see someone as X, should they ever make an attempt at Y?  For what purpose should they expose themselves?  So that every intention can continue to be misunderstood?  So that every move forward can be dismissed as just another anemic experiment?

In the effort to be right at all times, there are few hills we won't climb.  But only after reaching the top do we realize there was nothing to gain.  Neither person wins.  One loses immediately, and the other loses on the endless road of obligation.  It becomes the next round that must be won, because the last one is already forgotten. 

And this is precisely why forgiveness is such a profound relief.  Far from a sacrifice, it is the sole solution to the unfixable problem.  To forgive is to grant relief from payment of.  To cease to feel resentment against.  It is always one-sided.  There can be no true forgiveness if consideration is given by one to how it is ill-deserved by another.  No action can be taken by the receiver to earn it.  It's assignment is solely in the hands of the forgiver.  Which means that even though he knows he is in the right, just as the banker knows she is owed a specific repayment, it is in the grantor's hands to renounce any claims.  To humble himself unconditionally.  

The perfect beauty of it is that in the absolution of one bond, occurs the release of another.  The giver is relieved of a constant accounting.  The receiver is unconstrained to live freely.  Neither gains at the expense of the other's loss.  And though there can be no expectations of the forgiven, no reciprocal conditions, there can be overwhelming confidence in the gravity of this one simple act.

Confidence, because often that which we know to be true, is not.  Rightness brings a sense of justice for a time.  But justice built upon the construct of a human mind is set upon an illusory foundation.  Forgiveness allows us to live without having to defend our own mirages.

The act of forgiveness erases for all time a poison, that can never again seep in and destroy that which love seeks to build.  It is a gift, available to anyone for the giving, which requires as it's only cost our corrupt and useless pride.  

Forgiveness is the Magnificent Exchange:  For what is worthless; worth beyond measure.