“Miguel,” he said gently, with a sweet smile on his face, “all the things you’ve learned in school, and everything you think you understand about life, comes from knowledge. It isn’t truth.”
Didn’t he realize that I was a man now? He was speaking to me as if I were a child. I felt heat in my face as his words began to anger me.
“Don’t take offense, my child,” he went on. “This is the mistake everyone makes. People put their faith in opinions and rumors—and out of this, they construct a world, believing that their constructed world is the real world. They don’t know whether what they believe is true. They don’t even know whether what they believe about themselves is true. Do you know what is true, or what you are?”
“Yes, I know what I am!” I insisted. “How could I not know myself? I’ve been with myself since birth!”
“M’ijo, you don’t know what you are,” he said calmly, “but you know what you’re not. You’ve been practicing what you’re not for so long, you believe it. You believe in an image of you, an image based on many things that aren’t true.”
I didn’t know what to say next. I had expected praise, or at least an argument against my point of view. I would have been happy to participate in an intellectual boxing match with my grandfather. In my opinion, I had enough information to debate the master, and to win. Instead, what he gave me was a knockout punch to the self. Everything I thought about Miguel, my grandfather disqualified in a few hard sentences. Everything I knew about the world was now in doubt. Doubt!
It’s hard to overstate the importance of doubt when we’re bringing down the intellectual house we’ve built. We learn words, we believe in their meaning, and we practice those beliefs until our little house is solid and strong. Doubt is the tremor that brings it down, when it’s time. Doubt can cause a citadel of beliefs to crumble; and that kind of tremor is necessary if we want to see beyond our private illusions. An earthquake is necessary. I looked at my grandfather, and he smiled back at me, as if we had just shared a happy secret. Did he even notice that my self-esteem had been shattered?
“I know what I am, and I know about . . . things,” I stumbled. I was feeling defiant, as if defiance would save me from my embarrassment. “I know about the world I live in, and I know that good must always fight against evil.”
“Ah!” he said, with a flush of excitement. “Good versus evil, yes! The age-old human conflict! Do you see this conflict in the rest of the universe? Do you see good and evil wrestling within the forests and the orchards? Are trees anxious about the evils of the world? Are animals? Fish? Birds? Are any of Earth’s creatures consumed with worry over matters of good and evil?”
“Of course not.”
“Of course not? Then where does this conflict exist?”
Was this a trick? Was he determined to make a fool of me? “In the human species,” I said warily.
“In the human mind!”
“Well, yes . . . and there’s nothing more noble than the minds of men,” I added pretentiously. “If animals—”
“If animals could think, they’d be as worried about evil as we are? I hope not, for their sakes!”
We both laughed, and for moments after we were silent. “Miguel,” he said, when he felt my defenses weakening, “the conflict you speak of exists in the human mind, and it is not actually a conflict between good and evil; it is a conflict between truth and lies. When we believe in truth, we feel good and our life is good. When we believe in things that are not true, things that encourage fear and hatred in us, the result is fanaticism. The result is what people recognize as evil—evil words, evil intentions, evil actions. All the violence and suffering in the world is a direct result of the many lies we tell ourselves.”
I suddenly remembered the words of a great philosopher: Men are tormented by their opinions of things, not by the things themselves. I couldn’t remember where I had read that quote, or who had said it. A German, perhaps. No, a Frenchman.
“Miguel, stop,” don Leonardo said sternly, bringing me back from my fixation. “Stop, please,” he said, patiently this time. “Great thoughts should be applied, not catalogued. The privilege of knowledge is to serve the message of life. Knowledge itself is no message at all. Left in charge, it will drive us mad.”
I could sense that he was right. After a moment, I told him so, and he leaned back in his lawn chair and looked at me for a long time, considering. I thought the conversation was over, and that by agreeing with him I would be released. I could grab an empanada from the kitchen, say goodbye, and ride back to the city, where people appreciated me for my intelligence and wit.
“Miguel,” he said, his expression so serious that I knew I wasn’t going anywhere. “I see you’re trying hard to impress me, to prove you’re good enough for me, and I understand. You need to do that because you’re not yet good enough for yourself.”
Tears rushed to my eyes. I saw right away that my determined efforts to appear confident were a waste of time. All my opinions and assertions were hiding the fear that I wasn’t wise enough or smart enough. Don Leonardo could see more than I could see, and knew more about myself than I was willing to discover. I looked away from him, unable to handle the truth in his penetrating gaze. I looked away, yes—but I stayed where I was. I stayed with him to listen.
He told me much that afternoon, and it has taken me a lifetime to digest our conversation. What each of us wants above all is the truth, and it cannot be told in words. Like everyone, like everything, truth is a mystery posing as an answer. The letters I learned in school point to revelations that point back to mystery again. Truth existed before words, before humanity, and before this known universe. Truth will always exist, and language was created to be its servant. Words are the tools of our art, helping us to paint images of truth on a mental canvas. What kind of artists are we? What kind of artists do we want to be, and are we willing to give up the nonsensical things we believe to become those artists?
My grandfather told me that my greatest power was faith. It was up to me to direct that power wisely. The world was full of people eager to put their faith in an idea, an opinion, the opinions of other people. He urged me not to invest my faith in knowledge, but to invest it in myself. Though I didn’t realize it then, our conversation that afternoon set me on a path I would never abandon. From then on, I wanted to make sense of things. I wanted to understand myself and find out how it was that I had begun to believe in lies. It was my nature to seek answers. It is everyone’s nature to find the truth, and we will eagerly look for it anywhere, everywhere—except in us.
I wanted only the truth after that day, and all I had to guide me in the beginning were memories—memories based on random images and stories, leading to more distortions. But that was only the beginning. How quickly things would change for me! How generous truth is when we are willing to feel it, accept it, and be grateful.
Sarita, my lionhearted mother, is taking a similar path on this long, dream-fueled night, guided by the same memories . . . while the voice of knowledge whispers earnestly in her ear. For her troubles, she will bring home a pretender—the flesh-and-blood likeness of her youngest son, who has already found the truth, and has gleefully dissolved into its wonders.
Sarita was tired. She had been listening to the speeches of a dozen or more student activists on the university campus. Miguel had been the second to last to speak, and he