My Truth
I thought I understood truth. I really did.
I thought I understood truth. I really did.
I spent my sixty two of my seventy-seven years living my truth.
“My truth,” I used to say, “is what is true in my life.” People who hung on my every word printed that on plaques and nailed them to walls. Everyone embraced it. They sought to live my truth. They wore T-shirts in the Bronx, they designed posters and hung them in business schools along the Charles. Everywhere photos of my face speaking my words. “My truth is what is true in my life.”
I pursued my truth more than anyone.
I first started by washing cars, I was fifteen. I would put the best shine on each one. I did not care if you drove a Mercedes or a crappy junk car that ran on two of eight cylinders. I practically made it glow. People said, I turned their paint job ‘Nuclear.’
They all thought I was the best worker, but they were just steps for me to pursue my truth. They paid me for my work. They told their friends. They made me popular and then they made me rich. They lived as pawns to my truth. I could use them to make me richer than anyone.
I invested all I could from when I was fifteen. Here I am sitting upon billions and Charles Grostic Enterprises.
No one was going to make me their fool. People’s lives literally depended on every word I spoke. I was like their king, their feudal lord.
I spoke what they believed was their truth. They chose to bow down to it — my truth. They tried to have my life.
Last week, they found me gasping for air on the ground inside the gate of my driveway. I was only jogging. I lay still in the ICU now under best doctors and no one can do anything for me, nothing.
I am not the ultimate king. There are greater forces in the world.
I created my world, my way, but now that my world is ending, I realized, it was never my way.
I am nothing in this world but a fool.
I have nothing to show for my whole life but three wives and seven adult children tearing each other apart trying to divide what I leave behind. I have nothing! Nothing. I will be dead in minutes. I have nothing.
It took this moment for me to realize that it was never my world, it was never my truth.
I wish I sought after real truth. I did not. I was too much in pursuit of my world my way. I had that, until just yesterday, when I discovered the hardest teaching. It was never my world. That is the truth I wish people embraced. So many trying to be me and I am nothing.