It’s true. I absolutely do hold a genuinely cheerful outlook. Only it’s not Pollyanna, it’s real. Hopeful, yes, but still 100 percent authentic. I think it’s because I see clearly, and for me clarity has always led to hope.
“You’re in the wrong profession if you want to be upbeat,” one reader wrote recently. “Other columnists don’t sugarcoat life. They tell it like it is.”
Well, that’s OK I guess … if you believe that truth is always cynical and life remains at best a bitter disappointment. In that case, you can listen to people whine about the unfairness, the injustice, and the disillusionment and the diatribe will always tend to ring true.
But I’ve got to tell you I’m in the business of truth, and people who define their interaction with the world exclusively in terms of skepticism and suspicion are missing it by a mile. I don’t need to make stuff up because, as Dustin Hoffman (Capt. Hook) said in “Peter Pan,” “Why lie? The truth is so much more interesting.”
Just the other week my adult Sunday school class discussed the critical role truth must play if we ever want to know real peace.
“Unless we’re prepared to deal with the truth,” I said, “genuine peace is never going to be an option.”
We’d been talking about relationships, but the conversation applies equally well to institutions, communities and nations. In fact, the entire planet.
One participant took issue with the fundamental premise.
“You can’t just go blurting out the truth,” she said. “What if I looked at my neighbor and said, ‘Sorry to have to say this, but you’re ugly! You need to know the truth about how ugly you are.’”
Point taken. But labeling someone as unattractive has nothing to do with truth.
Truth is as much revealed as it is observed. And truth is a much deeper reality than the gathering of mere facts. Indeed, even information we refer to as “self-evident fact” more often than not turns out to be subject to broad interpretation.
How about the following “fact”: Derek Maul is 50 years old. Yes, there is evidence to support that statement. But when I filled out the detailed questionnaire at realage.com the number representing my age came back as 42. It has a lot to do with regular exercise, diet, lifestyle, family history and the fact that I don’t smoke. All that plus the real kicker: my children don’t live at home much any more so my wife, Rebekah, and I will continue getting younger over the next decade!
So which number represents truth: 50 or 42?
How about this one: Derek Maul is rich. Talk to the good folk over at my credit union and they may take issue with that statement. Run the numbers past most residents of planet Earth and they would amend the word to “wealthy.” From my point of view we are blessed beyond measure and very little of that equation has anything to do with dollars and cents.
“Well, you’re sheltered,” my critics have insisted. “Get back to us about your positive viewpoint after you’ve earned the right to talk about pain.”
I hate to disappoint, but I didn’t get to be 50 without experiencing my share of anguish and grief.
“If you say there’s hope then you’ve never really experienced the dark night of the soul,” my friend Sloan challenged one day.
“I have, and there is,” I replied in all honesty.
“Then you’re a liar,” he replied, without hostility.
“I’m telling you the truth,” I persisted, and went on to explain where I was coming from.
“I’ll grant you’re an eloquent liar, but I still don’t believe you,” Sloan said, unwilling to yield the point.
“Sloan,” I said, reading a desperate resonance of despair that may well have qualified my friend for his own newspaper column in some circles, “there’s nothing in all of creation that has the authority to separate us from the power of genuine love.”
There were tears in his eyes. “Well, I’ll admit you’re a beautiful liar,” he whispered. And then he walked away.

Derek Maul is a writer who lives in Valrico. You can reach him at .