How do we know what’s true, and how do we distinguish truth from belief? Is truth valuable in and of itself? These are some of the many questions asked by KidSpirit writers in an issue devoted to a perennial philosophical theme.

1. Does truth have inherent value? This is the Big Question posed by the KidSpirit Ed Board. Sofiy Inck answers that there is a difference between what she terms “observable” and “personal” truths and that we should respect both as valuable in their own ways. Read her piece as a group and discuss what she means. Do you agreee that there are two different kinds of truths and that they are equally valid? Try to think of examples in which people acted on observable truths and a personal truths and decide whether their actions were justified.

2. Zoe Miller and each of the Interfaith Connections writers grapple with the connection between truth and belief. Zoe describes how stories can turn into truths simply through the collective beliefs of others, and how beliefs in general can give us a sense of control — even save our lives in dangerous circumstances. In Interfaith Connections, Gracie Griffin describes how her Quaker faith helps her evaluate truths, while Fareeha Shah describes how Islam informs her search for the reason we exist, and Melynn Oliver narrates how Catholicism helped her identify her true self. How do you experience truth and belief in your life? Do the two come into conflict with one another or are they complementary?

3. In his PerSpectives article, Rabbi Rami Shapiro contends that in order to access truth we must be free. What do you think he means? Can his message apply even to contexts that are strict and rule-bound, like science or math? Research a favorite scientist, philosopher, explorer, poet, or other person who uncovered deep truths and find out what led them to their discoveries.

The Nature of Truth Group Guide

In high school, most everyone walks around trying to be someone they are not.

Almost everyone in high school is self-conscious. I am a student in an affluent public high school in an ideal suburban town where popularity is prized above most everything. Grades are extremely important, and sports perhaps even more so, but it is easy to forget what it means to have real-world problems. From a girl’s point of view, I often see other girls worrying about their bodies, their words, their clothes, their grades, and thousands of other things they agonize over without realizing it. I won’t deny that I am frequently insecure myself. Even though I recognize this, it’s not easy to stand against the crowd and risk being judged by others. In my experience, girls can form an aura of artificiality that slowly encircles them, becoming deep-rooted and ingrained. Often, it’s less about forming meaningful relationships with close friends that you genuinely enjoy being around, and more about building a foundation of friends that you want to associate with because they are suitably ranked in popularity or status among your clique members. You might say things about them behind your back to another friend, but you certainly don’t want to lose the infrastructure of friends so you wouldn’t criticize them even if you don’t like the way they are acting. After all, the more friends you have the more “likes” you will get on your profile picture on Facebook, right?

I am not yet able to relate to adulthood so, as a teenager, everything feels big and important and full of electricity, as if every decision made will have ramifications forever. From one moment to the next, you feel indomitable and vulnerable, insignificant and infinite. You want to recreate moments of invincibility. You never want to feel vulnerable or judged. And yet, almost everyone is simultaneously judging others and being judged. Sometimes life can seem like a mechanical repetition of SAT prep to homework to tests to sports to volunteer work — dull and monotonous — yet you are constantly fearing college applications and the future. Unlike the little kid who dreamed of being famous, I feel the same as everyone else. I don’t feel empowered or important.

Teenagers lie to each other because, in their own minds, it puts them in a position of power. They lie to their parents because it makes them feel rebellious. They gossip about others because it empowers them. They feel superior to the person they are judging. Holding a new piece of gossip turns one into a bearer of powerful knowledge that everyone wants to know. It makes teens feel important. Telling the truth in high school is usually left on the back burner. It’s intuitive to be a liar.

It’s ingrained within us to tell people what they want to hear or what will make us look better, or perhaps more altruistic or compassionate. Being honest with yourself and your friends about your true thoughts and impressions is not inherent to high school society. It’s easy to tell someone what he or she wants to hear, but it is much harder to tell the truth, or at least what you believe to be right.

According to Scottish philosopher David Hume human knowledge can only be based on experience. If we can’t experience everything in the universe, how can truth exist? It can’t. One’s beliefs or opinions are not the truth. However, by sticking to one’s core values and beliefs, it is possible to be true to oneself. This could be as simple as making conversation with someone who is ostracized by others.

Throughout our teen years, almost everyone goes through a time of experimentation. Still, some people hardly ever change while others try on different personas with nearly the same frequency that they try on clothes. Sometimes, spending time alone with a friend seems completely different from spending it with them when they are around other people. Are people who generally stay consistent with their beliefs and personality more true to themselves than people who do not? No. Everyone changes. No matter what you do, in a day, month, year, 10 years, you will change over and over again. This does not mean you are any less true to yourself. That identity changes as you react to people around you, take in your environment, experience pain and joy, turn thoughts over and over in your head, and a million other things that alter your perspective. Your identity is a combination of who you think you are and who other people perceive you to be.

Why are people in high school rarely ever comfortable with who they are? Everyone wants to “fit the look” and be liked and accepted, and some wear a superficial personality they hope will appeal to others in order to attain this. Ultimately, we realize that we are the only person we can make themselves comfortable and happy to live with; it’s important to accept yourself and not change to suit someone else’s idea. Maturation happens when the gap closes between the person you are privately, the person you are one-on-one, and the person you are in public. When the person you believe yourself to be aligns with the person others see, a kind of truth has been reached.

In a KidSpirit Feature article, teen writer Katie Reis writes about identity, self-discovery, and staying true to yourself in high school.

The Age of Discovery

“Boys! Come out here! Right about now is when the sunset begins! Honey, grab the camera!” My dad yelled from his chair.

We immediately stopped sword dueling on our Wii console to go outside on the balcony, where we had a perfect view of the mountains to watch the sun peek from its hiding place in the clouds. We sat and talked of how excited we would be when the sun actually appeared. All of a sudden, something mysterious came from the clouds above us.

“Look at the sky,” I said suddenly. “It’s turning completely orange, and the clouds are becoming pink.”

The sun slowly swam across the orange, pool-like sky, turning the gloomy clouds into glowing waterbed sheets.

“Oh my gosh,” I exclaimed. “This is unbelievable!”

I was struck by the sheer beauty of the scene unraveling before me. My dad replied in the southern accent he uses when the world needs some emphasis.

“It’s like God dern painted it wid ‘is own hands.”

At that moment, I realized he had spoken the vivid truth.

The warm reds, oranges, and yellows in front of us and the floating purples and blues behind us didn’t tell us that they were created by science and logical explanation. This was far beyond that. I kept watching, growing more excited about this place than ever. Yet I was silent as the sun dipped perfectly between two mountains crossing one another in the distance.

My mind was still blown from the moment, but little did I know, my mind was in for another surprise. A week later, it became dark and gloomy and then, very softly, it began to boom and boom again. Everyone fell silent for a few minutes. Softly. Drip, drip, drip, pitter-patter pitter-patter — fffsssssshhhhhh, the rain fell on the dry, thirsty ground of the desert. FLASH! My family gasped. It was like a jagged sword striking the earth in a duel to the death.

Then my dad said, “It looks like we’ve got a desert thund -”

The thunder surround-sound system decided to interrupt him before he could finish his sentence. I suddenly noticed that the edge of the balcony, where the roof did not protect the wooden floor, was drenched. I motioned for my brothers to come look. Just then my littlest brother sped past me and jumped into the rain. The sound of our laughter resonated throughout the wet balcony as we shivered from the cold water. Whenever thunder and lightning would appear, we would hop, giggle, and jump. We even sang a little gibberish rain song. After a while, my mom went in to grab towels for us, the rain began to slow, and the clouds cleared.

There were plenty more sunsets and thunderstorms in Santa Fe, New Mexico, that summer, and they all changed who I am. Since that trip last summer, I have not been able to stop thinking about them, and revisiting the memories. They were just so incredible I can’t let them go. By remembering these remarkable moments, I can now see the beauty in everything: people, places, and creations, no matter their mistakes or flaws. It has also changed my outlook on natural phenomena. I remember these instances and get a supernatural feeling. I now believe that not just science makes the grass grow.

The experience of this raw beauty helps remind me of a greater power, and helps strengthen my faith in God. I will do my best to never forget this memory. It was a godly miracle, and deserves to be remembered.

I wrote this awesome moment in my notebook during class. If I had to write a poem, I’d write this. If I had to write a paragraph explaining something significant about my life, I’d write this again. Usually when I write, I go back to the memory and fill it in with as much detail as possible. I feel every writer’s mission is to paint a picture with a thousand strokes so readers feel they are there with us, watching these magnificent wonders of nature.

In a KidSpirit Awesome Moments piece, teen writer Matt Delavan describes a moment of epiphany, awe, and God during a sunset and thunderstorm in Santa Fe.

Miraculous

I have been raised in the Catholic faith since the day I was adopted. As a baby, I received the first sacrament: Baptism.

Baptism symbolized my entrance into the Catholic community. From there, I attended Mass with my parents every Sunday at the Church of Saint Francis of Assisi. I started Sunday school at the tender age of six. Every Sunday, instead of going to church with my parents, I was sent to a small extension of the building used to study religion. There I would sit with my classmates and hear children’s versions of stories from the Bible. Being so young, I didn’t question what was going on. To me it was as simple as going to school every day.

Eventually, the time came when I was prepared to receive the second sacrament: First Communion. This was an important moment of my youth, since I was preparing to metaphorically receive Christ in body and blood. Communion is one of the most important parts of Mass. As usual, all my young mind knew was that I was going to wear a nice white dress and attend some kind of special ceremony. I was more concerned about being with my friends. After Communion, the only thing I was excited about was that I was now able to go to the altar with my parents, whereas before I wasn’t allowed to.

The next thing to prepare for was Confirmation, being confirmed was a pivotal moment. At that time, I simply viewed confirmation as when the big kids went to a second ceremony as important as First Communion. In eighth grade, we started discussing Confirmation in a more serious tone. I was asked to start thinking about who I wanted to be my patron saint.

After some deliberation, I decided on Saint Francis of Assisi. In addition to being the namesake of the first church I attended, he was the patron saint of animals. I’ve always been fond of animals because they have the ability to give you unconditional love. They live up to the saying “ignorance is bliss” as they aren’t afflicted with as many emotions and tend to be more at peace. I chose St. Francis for this simple reason at first, but as I began to research my chosen saint, I started to appreciate St. Francis in deeper ways. I admired his profound sense of humanity and how purely it existed in him. Being able to choose my patron saint was the first time I was able to celebrate what I, personally, loved about my faith.

With my confirmation just a few months away, the importance of the event finally dawned on me. Confirmation was a lot more significant than the previous religious events I had participated in. I was uncertain of my decision to follow through, as it might be an action I’d regret later. My Baptism and First Communion happened when I was very young. Not to mention the fact that they were never really an option. Confirmation, on the other hand, was not mandatory, and I could decide if I wanted to continue worshipping in the Catholic Church or leave the faith.

I wondered how I could be certain I wanted to be a Catholic when I didn’t know anything about other religions. I recalled my mother telling me that I should always read the fine print before signing up for things. This led to the realization that if I was going to continue the process of becoming a confirmed Catholic, I had to read the fine print of major religions. So I got my mom to order me a book about different faiths. First, I scrutinized all of the different branches of Christianity: Presbyterianism, Lutheranism, Methodism, and everything in between. Then I explored other religions: Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and Judaism. After absorbing the information I read, I reflected on whether to abandon Catholicism for a new path of faith. I didn’t ever seriously think of atheism, because I will always believe that there is a higher being than me. The traditions were much different than the ones of my church, and that in itself was intriguing. Hours and hours of thinking led me to the decision that I wanted to follow through with the Confirmation.

In the end, this decision was not an intellectual one. Continuing my journey as a Catholic felt most authentic to who I was. Catholicism has many core values that correspond with mine. Since I grew up in this religion, its beliefs became part of my person. I have always been encouraged to live like Jesus, and I truly believe that this is a fulfilling way to live.

On the day of my Confirmation, I felt whole and satisfied; I wasn’t just going through the motions as I had with the previous sacraments. I didn’t feel like I was missing anything that could have been filled with something else. I actually felt closer to God — being Confirmed, sealed that I was going to continue putting my faith in him to guide my life. Since then, I continue to be filled with love for God.

In my high school years so far, my faith has kept me sane. I’ve recently dealt with a lot of obstacles that I couldn’t overcome on my own. As a freshman in a large public school, I felt like I was being torn apart by the academic competition and social distraction. My life was in a downward spiral, and I was not comfortable talking to anyone around me about how I felt. When I didn’t have any physical being on earth to talk to, I resorted to praying. This last ditch effort proved to be a great comfort to me. It’s not that my situation changed — school remained as torturous as it had always been. But believing I wasn’t alone, that God wanted to listen to me, and would not be burdened by my venting, helped to relieve a lot of the stress that had been building up. The church had always taught me Jesus was inside of me, but it wasn’t until this experience that I truly understood I was not alone in my suffering.

Historically, the church has not encouraged its members to search for the truth outside the limits of its teachings. However, I have learned that challenging your own faith can actually make it stronger. If I hadn’t wrestled with my Confirmation, I would have most likely maintained a superficial attitude towards the religion that I followed as a child. By daring to question if I truly wanted to dedicate my life to Christ, I actually entered into a deeper relationship with God.

In a KidSpirit Interfaith Connections article, teen writer Melynn Oliver shares what she learned about truth, God, and herself after wrestling with her Catholic faith in light of her confirmation.

Awakening

That was the announcement Reverend Margaret made at a retreat I led last November. She was talking about the Internet, explaining that access to the Internet was free and no password was required. As soon as she spoke these words, however, I knew she could have been talking about Truth as well. There is no password.

I grew up in an Orthodox Jewish home. I was taught that truth was found in the Hebrew Bible, that God had chosen the Jews as the bearers of this truth, had promised us the Land of Israel as our eternal heritage, and that by living in accordance with the rules and regulations of Jewish life I was embodying that truth and carrying it into the world. I believed every word; and then I didn’t.

I stopped believing when I was 16. I had just learned how to meditate and was sitting cross-legged one summer morning on the shore of a lake in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. I can’t tell you exactly what happened, since the “me” to whom it happened disappeared during the happening. But when I returned after the event passed, I felt an absolute unity with all life; a love for and from all living things; and an unshakable realization that Truth is free.

From that moment on, I no longer believed in a God who chose one people over others, who wrote books, dabbled in real estate, or set rules and rituals for my life. Instead I believed in God as reality, a wild, free, and forever creative God that didn’t choose or reject, save or damn. This God wasn’t true as opposed to false; this God was Truth itself.

What is the Truth as I discovered it? In Hebrew we sayhevel havalim, impermanence upon impermanence. This is what the Teacher of Wisdom tells us in the opening lines of my favorite biblical book, Ecclesiastes. Most English translations render the Hebrew as “vanity of vanities,” or “futility upon futility,” or“meaninglessness upon meaninglessness,” but hevel really refers to the nature of life being as impermanent as the morning dew: each moment is real but not lasting.

The Truth as I experience it ishevel havalim: everything is born and dies, and because it does, you have compassion for all that lives. Why this is so, I don’t know. All I know is that knowing the Truth makes you kind and just. Access to Truth is free. There is no password. In fact, the only thing that keeps you from accessing it is the belief that there is a password to learn and you have not yet learned it, or, if you have been given the password, you have not yet mastered it, which is why you have not found the riches your particular religion promises you.

I have been a rabbi and teacher of world religions for over 30 years, and the one thing that almost all religions have in common is the insistence that there is a password, and they have it. Sometimes the password is a certain set of beliefs — this or that creed. Sometimes the password is a certain set of practices — meditating one way or another, praying one way or another. Sometimes the password is a certain Holy Name that must be recited in order to access Truth: Jesus, Yahweh, Krishna, or Allah.

The longer we seek the password, the longer it will take us to access Truth. The more we focus on finding our way into Truth the more difficult it is for us to see that we are in the midst of Truth right now. The kingdom of God, as Jesus taught us, is within us and around us (Gospel of Thomas 77b). To see the kingdom you have to remove the blinders that keep you from seeing it. How? In Judaism we call this “lech lecha.”

In Genesis Abram and Sarai (soon to be renamed Abraham and Sarah) are called to leave home (Genesis 12:1). The Hebrew used here is “lech lecha,” and most English Bibles translate this as “go forth.” This translation isn’t wrong, just flat. True, Abram and Sarai are going to physically leave home, but the Hebrew suggests that their journey is as much a spiritual one as it is a physical one. Lech means “walk,” and lecha means “to yourself.” Abram and Sarai — and you and I — are called to find their/our true self, the self that knows the Truth, that sees the kingdom of God within and without. And how do they find it? By letting go of all they know.

God says, “Lech lecha from your country, your kin, and your parents’ house to a land I will show you” (Genesis 12:1). Physically this simply means they are to travel far from their original home, but, as the ancient rabbis noticed, if this were merely a physical journey the Bible would have said “Go forth from yourparents’ house, your kin, and your country” rather than the other way around. After all when you take a long trip you first have to leave your parent’s house, then your extended family, and then your country. By reversing the order, Torah is telling us that this is a spiritual journey of letting go of the limitations, biases, and conditioning that defines you whether it be nationalism, ethnicity, race, gender, religion, or the conditioning of your parents. Only when others no longer define you are you ready to see the land God wants you to see.

And what is this land? It is the land under your feet here and now. God isn’t showing you a new land, but showing you the same land in a new way, a way that reveals the kingdom; the Truth of impermanence, and the Truth of justice, compassion, and love that arises when we know life to behevel havalim. And when you see the Truth, what happens? You become a “blessing to all the families of the earth” (Genesis 12:3) — all of them: mineral, vegetable, animal, human, etc.

Is there a password for accessing this Truth? No. But there is a cost: setting aside the conditioning that shapes us and that blinds us to Truth. Some of us are so attached to our conditioning, so in love with our blinders, that the thought of having to drop them in order to see the Truth and become a blessing is one thought too many. The cost of accessing the Truth is being free, and many of us, maybe most of us, don’t want to be free. Being free means that we have to think for ourselves. Being free means that we have to take responsibility for our own actions. Being free means that we can’t project all our problems and failures onto others. Being free means that we must choose to set down our conditioning and choose to become a blessing over and over and over again.

I want you to be free, but I can’t give freedom to you. Only you can walk to your self and access the Truth of impermanence and love. All I can do is remind you — there is no password. Walk on.

In a KidSpirit PerSpectives essay, Rabbi Rami Shapiro shares his experiences and wisdom about searching for truth, meaning, and God.

There Is No Password

I am
half overflowing Happiness
half endless Pain.
I am Life and Love
Death and Despair—
the alternating bands
of Light and Darkness
Truth and Lies…

I am your Desire—
Nature and Conscience
Hopes and Dreams
Fear and Nightmares
I am the Soul of all Lives
the Memories of the Dead.

I am the Essence of your Emotions—
the vast expanse of Nothing,
yet Everything…
I am the Artist who paints the Sky,
I am the Tides of flowing Time
the Past, Present and Future.
I am your Thoughts and Feelings
the distant pinprick of Stars
the yellow warmth of Sun
Moon’s silver laughter
I am the Heaven in Hell
the Dream in Despair.

I am the Intelligence of the human mind
the Instinct of the animal
I am the Parallel Worlds in the Same Universe
Parallel Perceptions in the Same World.

In a KidSpirit poem, teen poet Sunwrita Dastidar explores pain and happiness, light and dark, hope and fear - the parallel truths that exist in all of us.

Parallel Perceptions

The moment comes: the bulging grey clouds
release their load down on the earth below.

The air fills with white snowflakes
parachuting down to the ground
draping towns with a thick white blanket

To those outside in the raging storm,
the glacial air, the blizzard is a foe,
a bitter enemy, a threat.

But to those in warm living rooms
it is entertainment,
as they sip mugs of warm cocoa
and stare out at the furious weather beyond

In a KidSpirit poem, teen poet Will Hodgkinson meditates on blizzards, snowflakes, and winter.

Blizzard

I wish we could go back to the times when we were young,
You didn’t know what war was, really –
I knew but didn’t care.

Sadness was a far-off thing;
Life was joyous, a constant song
And the beauty of winter wasn’t lost, because we were alone.
There was no desperate cry for peace,
Nor sobs to end it all,
For dancing in the snow was fun, and nothing more:
Just something to do before the dawn.

Things were simpler, then, I suppose
But complicated in their own right.
The trouble with cats who live by the frozen stream
Is that they are free to think
And thinking gets the world to move
And melts the river ice.

Create a rabbit from the snow and burst it in one leap
If you dare, to earn the wrath
Of those who love the rare beast.
Sit upon an osseous throne to raise the roaring cry
Of a tiger that will haunt the dreams of many a child –
Including you and I.
It’s dream from which we can never awake,
A silence we can never break.
Is this the winter song that touched us both
And forged in stone what we loved most?

The river ice has frozen over
Until you come again –
This is a place where winter melts,
And the world’s formed by your hand.

In a KidSpirit poem, teen poet Maria Christian meditates on the passing of childhood at a playground in winter.

The Playground in Winter

What a perplexing paradox,
This nature of truth -
Evolving strangely with time.

Do the truths of yesterday
Hold true today?
And will what is true today
Be equally true tomorrow?

The answers lie entwined
Amidst broken branches
Of meaning and purpose,
In unexplored chambers
Of the fragmented conscience.

How it pains me -
This illicit legitimacy,
Of truth being true.
In times like today
Every truth is but contextual,
Woven intricately and
Manipulated shrewdly
To gratify man’s ego.

We preach of truth;
And with such fervor,
We sing this rhyme,
But these are all
Shades of grey,
Neither black or white.

The truth does exist, but oh!
What respect have we today
For its sanctity. 
The winds of greed blow -
And we are being swept away
Amidst howls and sighs;
Just like these drops of truth evaporate
From an ocean of gnarling lies.

In a KidSpirit poem, teen poet Swastika Jajoo explores the perplexing paradox of truth.

True . . . Or Not?

Recently, I was sitting in Greek class having one of the most thought-provoking and frustrating debates I had ever had.

First, because thinking of the idea of truth as a concept independent of fact, is very difficult to consider, and because of this it is frustrating to argue about. But secondly, because I didn’t really know where I stood. I was arguing based on my gut feeling, but I didn’t really know how to back it up. We were reading Plato’s The Euthyphro, which is a conversation set in ancient Greece between Socrates, the famous philosopher, and Euthyphro, a religious expert. Socrates encounters Euthyphro near the courts and asks him why he is there. Euthyphro tells him that he is on his way to court to prosecute his father for manslaughter. Socrates was astonished because in ancient Athenian law only the descendant’s family was allowed to prosecute.

Socrates tells Euthyphro that he must be a great expert on the nature of piety and holiness. He then asks if Euthyphro can help him understand piety, as Socrates himself was charged with impiety; a charge for which he would later stand trial and be sentenced to death. The dialogue continues with Euthyphro trying to define piety and pinpoint what makes something holy [τὸ ὅσιον] or unholy [τὸ ἀνόσιον], and concludes with Euthyphro conceding he cannot come up with an absolute definition of piety.

About halfway through the story I mentioned to my teacher that I thought that Socrates was being unnecessarily cruel to Euthyphro. My teacher disagreed, saying he thought what Socrates was doing was noble. He argued that Socrates was asking genuine questions and really did want to understand the nature of piety. I said fair enough, but there was no reason for Socrates to destroy Euthyphro’s understanding of piety, just because he didn’t agree with it. We dropped the discussion and continued reading the text, but the question stuck with me: is it worth making someone unhappy in the pursuit of truth?

In this case my gut reaction was no. Not because I believe that truth takes precedence over happiness but because this specific type of truth doesn’t take precedence over happiness. Thinking about this question made me realize that I needed to define what I meant by “this specific type of truth,” so I divided truth into two categories: observable truth and personal truth.

Observable truths can be investigated and understood by more than one person. If I have two apples and you give me four apples, I have six apples. Observable truths are absolute and singular. And they are essential because it would be difficult to advance as a society if we, for example, didn’t believe in these truths. After all, you can’t fly or even build an airplane unless you believe in the law of gravity. If we did not value observable truth, wonderful, useful things like air travel would never have been invented.

Personal truths are a bit more complicated: they can’t be observed or refuted. For example, my relationship with God is “X.” That isn’t a statement that really can be investigated or understood to be false. Personal truths are different for everyone. Personal truth wasn’t really anything I had explicitly thought about until that Greek class. Personal truth is just that, personal, so it seems wrong that we should destroy the happiness of others for our own personal sake.

What holiness means to one person is different from what it means to another. There is value in this, but in my view, it doesn’t override an individual’s happiness. And the question of whether or not it does override happiness is one that people are faced with everyday. It could be as simple as not talking about politics at a family dinner where not everyone has the same opinion. If we discuss a contentious issue we might learn something or change our minds, but we also run the risk of upsetting a family member and maybe even ruining an important relationship. We have to decide whether or not the risk of creating tension and unhappiness is worth the potential gain in personal truth. I come from an extended family where we do not all share the same faith. Thus, talking about where we differ within the religious realm can sometimes be pleasant and thought provoking, but too often it can end with a loved one feeling offended or angry.

Given that I believe that truth is not absolute, and that it varies from person to person, the question for me is not really whether truth has value, but rather how willing are we to pursue our own personal truth at the expense of other people’s feelings. And I fear that too often people get so busy seeking their own personal truths that they fail to consider the emotional impact of their search on other people. The pursuit of personal truth can devalue the importance of human emotion. Call me an optimist, but I think that if we can more deeply understand and value the importance of respecting others’ emotions, we can transcend how we deal with larger issues. And in doing so, we can get better at solving larger conflicts, between neighbors, communities, and even nations.

In a KidSpirit Big Question response, teen writer Sofiy Inck explores the essential nature of ethics, morality, and truth.

Does Truth Have Inherent Value?

Once I left a flower in front of the statue in a garden beside my family’s rented apartment.

It seemed like the right thing to do since I had just moved into the house, a sort of personal contribution to the garden. I felt stupid afterward, looking at the flower on the ground, but the statue had an angry-looking smirk on its face and I found myself slightly nervous. Weeks later, watering again, I left the same garden to find that my right shoe was filled with many of those same purple flowers. They filled my hands as I looked at the statue incredulously.

“You did this, didn’t you?” I asked the statue, halfway serious. It looked like maybe it was joking. I could have sworn it looked amused.

People believe many things with differing degrees of seriousness. In middle school I heard a man whistling while in the bathroom, but it was probably the choir class across the hall. Without delay, I started a rumor that the fifth floor bathroom was haunted, which spread much faster than I had expected. Soon there were stories about monsters coming out of the air vents, Bloody Mary, and all sorts of exciting things. I consider starting that rumor one of my higher achievements and I take great pride in it.

My middle school haunted bathroom escapades are a small-scale example of a larger phenomenon: people like to entertain the idea that superstitions are real. Even if they don’t entirely believe them, they still have no trouble acting as though something exists, just in case. People wish on shooting stars and other equally inconsequential things and hope for something that they actually want. They may not think in a logical way that it will make their wish come true, but the possibility is more than enough to convince them to practice their superstitions. Belief is easy to induce because it’s natural. It is in our interest to believe. If somebody says, “Hey, there’s a bear in that cave,” and you don’t listen, you probably will be in great danger.

Fearing the unknown is one of our most natural instincts. Wishing and doing things that you think are “good luck” aren’t quite as basic and animalistic as doing something to avoid possible danger, but I believe both are rooted in the same instinct. Generally speaking, fear is the most important feeling for individual survival because it keeps us out of harm’s way. In many cases, superstitions are just an extension of that fear. If there is a chance that something is dangerous and superstition can help us avoid it, then we will believe in it, at least a little. There’s so much to actually fear that people have little trouble believing things that may not be true.

We know that beliefs make sense in terms of survival, but do they really make sense when we’re experiencing them? What constitutes belief, really? It isn’t always something that can be described as a logical thought process, at least not as I understand it. Even when people don’t actually think something is real, they still might have a reaction to it, like a skeptic fearing a ghost story. Does the skeptic really believe in ghosts just because he or she reacts to the story? Or is it only a reaction that has nothing to do with what they actually think about ghosts? Mostpeople don’t believe that spilling salt will bring bad luck, but that doesn’t mean that some won’t toss it over their shoulder anyway. What is it that can actually be considered belief?

In my view, belief is when something affects you to the point where you change the way you behave in order to accommodate it. At that point whatever you believe is practically real because it affects your behavior. One of the reasons I think religious beliefs evoke such strong emotions is the amount of action involved. While there can be overlap between religious belief and superstition, the former often involves a great deal more “doing” than the latter. Often religious beliefs involve codes and rules that must be followed. The two also differ in that religious beliefs tend to apply moral ideas beyond simply beliefs, and involve a more complete system of ideas and values. Believing things about the creation of the universe is bound to produce different effects than superstitions about luck that can exist with no strings attached. Religious beliefs include incredibly powerful ideas. I am in awe of the strength of ideas. Ideas like the ones involved in religious belief and superstition may be the closest thing the average human has to bending reality; imagining a world that ascribes to something beyond scientific rules. It’s no wonder that superstitions are so widespread. Not only do they play into our natural survival instincts but they also lend credence to the idea that our hopes and dreams may someday be fulfilled.

When you believe in something beyond what you can observe, it can give you a sense of order when faced with things you can’t understand. It can lend a feeling of control over the uncontrollable. Belief in dangerous things could potentially save your life. Believing in positive things can lend conviction and confidence. Often people find it easier to succeed when carrying a good luck charm. Even if you don’t believe in anything beyond the realm of science, it is obvious that belief is a powerful force.

In a KidSpirit Feature article, teen writer Zoe Miller explores how some of our most powerful instincts - hope, fear, the will to survive - lead us to believe in superstitions.

This Is Mostly True

One afternoon two summers ago, on a crowded bus in England, I noticed that my pocket felt lighter than normal. Immediately I realized what was missing: my iPhone.

I frantically checked my other pockets and my bag, then pushed to the front of the bus. I asked the driver to let me out and bolted back to the station where, minutes earlier, I had been playing a game on my phone.

Of course, the shortest known measurable unit of time, used by particle physicists around the planet, is the time it takes for an iPhone lying on a crowded sidewalk to be snatched up by some unscrupulous passerby. So the frenzied search I conducted in the following hours was, inevitably, futile. I confronted the stark reality. My beloved iPhone was gone.

After reading this, I suspect my readers will be split into two camps. One group will completely understand my desperation; in fact, it will likely remind them of their own lost smartphones. The other group will think, “How on earth did the world get this ridiculous?” The undeniable truth of the matter is, whether good or bad, technology has fundamentally changed the way we live our lives. We are more dependent on technology than ever before and in many aspects of our lives, our traditional human processes have been replaced with technology. For most of us, our devices are never more than an arm’s length away. According to a Pew Research study, 91% of American adults own a cellphone and 56% own a smartphone. Globally, the World Bank found that 75% of adults own cell phones. We use our phones for everything; and when we don’t, we use our computers or tablets.

Considering how large a part these devices have come to play in our world, it seems obvious that there will be consequences, both positive and negative. Some of these are readily apparent; for instance, it’s easier for us to reach each other on short notice — and to pick a relatively indisputable negative effect, if not terribly profound — they have made it easier to waste time. I’d like to address a rather more abstract consequence of the onslaught of these devices: what effect does technology have on truth in our modern society?

As a teenager growing up in the twenty-first century, one of the most drastic ways modern technology has affected my generation is in the way it has changed how we present ourselves to each other. In the history of human culture, it has always been important how we are seen by others. This of course is far older than technology; it’s one of the basic motivations for humans. Changing or hiding our “true” self from others can take the form of the mother who puts on a fake smile for her children but is actually scared or feeling vulnerable, or the boy who goes to school wearing a fake Rolex but is far less wealthy than he’d like his peers to believe.

Technology, such as smartphones and high-speed computers, or communication on the Internet, has allowed and even forced us to calibrate our appearances like never before. Because we interact so extensively on social networking websites, our online profiles have become a vital part of our outward selves. Personally, as a Facebook user, I have memories of hours spent trying (and undoubtedly failing) to seem witty in my comments and statuses, agonizing over which photograph to select as my profile picture, even carefully selecting which pages to “like” or which subjects to add to my “interests.” The knowledge that everything I have said or done on the site (aside from the messaging feature which, not coincidentally, is the only function of the site I still regularly use) would be visible to practically everyone I knew was at the forefront of my mind. I am confident that the vast majority of my peers, as well as the older users of the site, are just as deliberate about this as I am. The result of this collective online self-customization is that as we trapeze through the virtual world of our friends, acquaintances, enemies, or lovers, people we see in the flesh every day or never at all, we are not really interacting with their true selves. Rather we’re seeing and confiding in fictional characters, manufactured for us as well as by us, for the rest of world.

There are of course a number of different ways one can define truth. It is obvious that the availability of modern technology has made it tremendously easier to procure information as we have the means to quickly access a staggeringly large amount of it online. With access to the Internet, we can learn about practically anything we want; we can get definitive answers to all kinds of factual questions; we can find trustworthy statistics and facts to help determine the validity of any argument and make informed decisions based on them. Clearly we have greater access to truth, or at least information, with technology than without.

But I would argue that this immense wealth of information is as limiting as it is expanding, and poses some deep challenges to truth. As we increasingly look for answers to all our questions on the Internet, we are susceptible to blindly trusting what we read. If an article seems well-written, includes statistics or mentions a scientific study, or is written by a seeming expert, what reader who isn’t already knowledgeable about the subject is going to read it with a skeptical eye? Chances are the article is correct, or closer to correct than whatever an uninformed reader would have arrived at. But we are nevertheless at risk of merely adopting the opinions we find online. When everyone who looks up a topic they’re curious about — let’s say a political issue — finds and subscribes to the opinion in the online article, it is possible the entire society becomes more conformist, if they are willing to believe what they read and not look at differing opinions elsewhere. Where otherwise a separate “truth” may apply for each individual, based on their specific social status, ethnicity, passions or beliefs, there is instead a mere two- or three-line, store-bought, one-size-fits-all, piece of information deemed true.

If this is too abstract a complaint against the overwhelmingly giant amount of information accessible by modern devices, here is a more concrete one, which is ironically supported by a number of studies: having so much information accessible so quickly is terrible for our memory. This is intuitive. Why waste valuable mental storage space on information when it is only a few clicks away? Memory plays a huge role in shaping us as individuals and forming our beliefs or personal truths. Rendering memory unnecessary has been a big focus for modern technology. For instance, Google recently released a program called Google Now, which can tell you what you want to know before you know you want to know it. The program notices, for example, that you normally pick up your child at 3 o’clock, and this program makes sure you don’t forget. It will tell you how to get to your meeting without you ever telling it you had a meeting. It will remind you that today is your wedding anniversary. All these could potentially be useful reminders, and yet, it would be all too easy to become dependent on services like these — to let them lead our lives, to let them tell us what to do and when to do it. Of course, human dependence on Google Now would be wonderful for Google.

There is one last thing to remember about the worlds that are accessed through or created by modern technology: we are made extremely vulnerable by them. We are vulnerable to big corporations, whose ultimate goal may be for us to spend as much money as possible on their products, and may be only too happy to shape the world in a way that exploits humanity in the face of electronic usage. We are vulnerable to governmental or institutional agencies who may wish to invade our privacy and violate our rights as well as destroy information provided by the free press. We are vulnerable to each other, in a world where everyone is hidden behind a cloak of anonymity.

When all is said and done, what we experience within technology is not reality. We are not truly together if there are screens between us. The world we live in more and more is created and tailored for us, and thus is designed to isolate us, to contain us, to limit us. Am I advocating a complete withdrawal from technology, that we all throw away our cellphones and computers? Not at all. Technology provides tremendous potential for propelling us towards a better and greater understanding of ourselves and our world. But we should recognize the pitfalls on the path of progress and take great care to avoid them. We need to find the truths that really matter to us — our relationships with one another, our own ideas about the world, who we are as individuals, as human beings — and make sure we never lose sight of them.

In a KidSpirit Feature article, teen writer Akash Mehta examines technology's true effects on ourselves and our modern society.

 The Truths Behind Modern Technology

As I rode in the backseat of my cousin’s tiny yellow car through the bustling town of Panjim, India, to my uncle’s house, I gazed out the window and marveled at the different colors.

It was Christmas season and every building was a different shade of bright pastel, adorned with religious artifacts, from crosses to statues of Hindu gods. The streets overflowed with cars and buses, bikes and people. I felt overwhelmed, my senses bombarded with sights, sounds, and smells as Reuben skillfully navigated his vehicle through the crowds.

Out my window I watched two women walking together. One was wearing a beautiful bright blue patterned sari, while the other wore a black full-body burqa. Clearly they did not practice the same religion, but they were laughing together like best friends.

We turned off the main road to a more residential area near my uncle’s house. I noticed that every house seemed to be celebrating something different. There were houses with shrines to Hindu gods next to homes adorned with colorful star lanterns, an Indian Christmas tradition. We passed a church with a big cross lit up for Christmas, a Hindu temple adorned with colorful statues of the gods, and a domed mosque embellished with multicolored tiles, all within a few blocks of each other.

Reuben, a devout Catholic, stopped his car to let a herd of cows cross the road. I asked why he did not just honk or drive around them. He had not been shy about honking when we were driving through the city.

“That would be disrespectful to Hindus. To them, these animals are sacred,” he replied.

“What do you think of the cows? Does it bother you to have to stop for them?” I asked.

“No. Hindus have faith that God is present in one place, while I believe he is in another, but we are all just looking for the same truth. In the end who is to say that they are not right? I cannot dislike them for having different beliefs than I do or for being faithful to their religion.”

In the news India is not usually portrayed as an especially tolerant country. It seems as if I am always reading articles about the mistreatment of women and ethnic groups. But during that car ride I realized that the country has come a long way. Intolerance did not appear to be as prevalent as the articles had led me to believe. In Panjim different religions coexist, adding to the culture and color of the city.

Surrounded by these different religions I suddenly understood that in many ways they are similar. Nobody, including me, really knows the truth about why we are all here or what comes after this life. Everyone seeks answers. It was an eye-opening moment, both wonderful and a bit intimidating, to realize that we are all in the same position, trying to understand the nature of truth. Ultimately, I have found that truth lies within; it is not something to be dictated by others. It is personal and must be respected, just as my cousin Reuben acted toward those cows we passed on the car ride home.

In a KidSpirit Awesome Moments piece, teen writer Simone Britto reflects on a trip to India, where she learned that, despite our different religious traditions, we are all searching for the same thing: truth. 

A Realization About the Nature of Truth

Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

Nothing but the Truth: A Documentary Novel, by the American author Avi, is exactly that. It is nothing . . . but the truth. The novel is made up entirely of interviews and factual records, such as memos and diary notes, with no narration. This sparse style allows the facts to speak for themselves as each character relates their side of the story. In doing so, the truth of the story becomes obscured by each person’s perception of the event.

The novel centers on an aspiring track star, Philip Malloy, who gets suspended for humming the United States national anthem, which leads to a national scandal. An education reporter who works for the Manchester Record interviews Philip’s teacher, the school principal, the superintendent, and other people about what happened leading up to Philip’s suspension.

Each interviewee gives a slightly altered version of what actually happened. The principal is in denial about the suspension and regards children’s records as confidential, the teacher concludes she has nothing to say about the matter after initially claiming it was a disturbance that went against school rules, and the superintendent has no comment. Although Philip is the first to get interviewed about what happened to cause his suspension, due to a small miscommunication his story is flawed from the beginning, and even the newspaper states he is in tenth grade rather than ninth. These examples show how conflicting stories alter the “truth” of an event.

Truth is the central idea in Nothing but the Truth because the novel is about the different interpretations of a single event. It makes you ponder questions such as: Whose story should the reader believe and why? How do we know what actually happened? Avi lets us decide for ourselves by only giving the facts; the memos, diary notes, and interviews that document the experience.

This theme of decoding what is true is put into perspective by the conflicting stories the characters in the novel present, which underlines how there really is no single truth at all. Avi confuses the reader about who is telling the truth by twisting the story through the perspective of each character interviewed, where everyone offers a different opinion. Midway through the novel, the reader realizes that perhaps there is no such thing as truth because everyone perceives events differently. When Avi adds the media, it compounds the difficulties of finding the truth, since some media sources glamorize stories for their own benefit or to showcase their network and grow their audience.

In Nothing but the Truth by the time the media does get involved, it is already too late to learn what happened because the focus is so much on other people’s stories. This is Avi’s main point. You may never really know the truth because it is constantly interpreted by numerous parties with conflicting stories. Furthermore, the characters become defensive and emotional when asked about Philip’s suspension. They act illogically or let their emotions get in the way of telling the facts of the event. Our hearts and minds — emotion versus logic — often fight against one another, which makes it difficult to maintain a clear perspective.

Although I enjoyed paging through the novel to see how the story unfolded, the characters speak very unrealistically. As a high school student I have first-hand experience with how children and teenagers speak — to adults, to one another, to someone younger than them — and I think that Avi needs to pay a visit a food court in the mall or get on the subway to hear how kids really talk.

In one scene where Philip is conversing with his classmate, the classmate says, all in the same breath, “Narwin is one of the best teachers. All the kids say so. It’s really embarrassing.”

Philip replies, “What are you talking about?”

“You were just doing that to annoy her,” his classmate answers.

This conversation is one of many that seem superficial and forced. Perhaps this style is due to the book being entirely in script form, minus stage direction. However, the language is overly formal and there is no slang. A hint of teen-friendly lingo would have been nice. As for the characters themselves, Philip’s inaction made me really angry. I imagined him lying back on a couch with popcorn in hand, watching the whole story unfold, thinking the publicity was no big deal. His attitude remains unchanged and he feels zero empathy for his teacher who is forced to leave the school. It seems as if he thought that after the scandal was over, he would finally become the track star that he aspires to in the beginning of the novel.

Although I found Philip’s stubbornness annoying and the dialogue awkward, I feel this book deserves a 3.5-star rating for several reasons. The portrayal of the media in the book is effective. Avi realistically illustrates how the media tends to stretch out stories more than necessary for their own benefit, and choosing to write the book in “documentary” style lets the story emerge on its own without the aid of narration.

Nothing but the Truth was thought-provoking, and I recommend it to teenagers and adults alike because it gives insight into how “truth” can be seen through the different versions of one story. In the end, however, too many third parties and their stories obscure the facts of what actually happened to Philip. Readers are left with one conclusion: that the impossibility of a single truth is, in fact, the nature of truth.

In a KidSpirit Media review, teen writer Misbah Awan shares her opinion of Nothing but the Truth: A Documentary Novel by Avi. 

The Award for Most Truthful Goes to…

Would the average American teenager share many cultural similarities with an Amazonian teen? Probably not. The dissimilarities begin with communication.

Daniel Everett, a missionary and linguist who lived with the Pirahã tribe describes the idiosyncrasies of one of the most isolated cultures in the world in his book Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes.

Everett started work with the Pirahã in 1977, hoping to convert the tribe to Christianity. Over time, he developed an attachment to their unique customs and language. In Don’t Sleep, Everett documents the ways in which the Pirahã language is fundamentally different from other languages.

Pirahã, despite being a language isolate, a language with no demonstrable relationship to other languages, shares many characteristics with other languages. It is a tonal language, meaning that pitch is used to distinguish words or grammar, with a subject-object-verb sentence structure. Its speakers number in the hundreds, and they live in a village in the rainforest with minimal outside contact.

Linguists are interested in Pirahã because of its unusual features. Math has been purported to be the universal language. Scientists even use math to try to contact intelligent extraterrestrial life with radio signals. Yet Pirahã lacks basic numbers. When asked to count, they use ambiguous phrases such as “a few” or “many” to describe a quantity. Pirahã also do not express multiple thoughts in a single sentence. Single phrases, such as, “the big fish ate the bait” would be expressed as two separate phrases in Pirahã: “the fish ate the bait” and “the fish was big.”

Mysteriously, Pirahã does not express complex ideas within a single sentence. Different ideas are broken into several sentences. Phrases of phatic communication, speech used to share feelings or establish sociability, do not exist. “Thank you” or “goodbye” has no meaning to the Pirahã people. When presented with such a question, a Pirahã speaker may ask what is good about the day, or why they should thank someone when they would have done a favor in much the same way.

Everett’s discoveries have been challenged by one of the greatest authorities in the linguistic field, Noam Chomsky. Chomsky asserts that humans have an inborn knowledge of basic language rules, while Everett’s observations suggest that Pirahã break several of these supposed universal rules. Everett’s ideas have not gained acceptance, and most linguists subscribe to Chomsky’s theories. Mainstream linguists criticize the way Everett has changed his analysis of the linguistic structure of the Pirahã language, accentuating its unique features in recent work, and Chomsky himself has even gone so far as to call Everett a charlatan.

Does our language define who we are? The title of Everett’s book is one instance of the cultural understanding required to convey meaning. When translated to English, the phrase, “don’t sleep, there are snakes,” means something completely different than in Pirahã. Everett explains that the phrase, in the context of their environment and habits, can mean “good night.” The phrase is meant to be taken at face value, and understood for what it is: a simple, well-intentioned, cautionary piece of advice. The tribe lives in the central Amazon rainforest, where snakes are a serious threat, and where warning about snakes makes more sense than simply wishing a good night. Pirahãs also believe they are physically hardened by sleeping less. Therefore, the literal translation of the phrase is far different than its actual significance. To understand the phrase, one must understand the culture.

Everett came to the Pirahã village to try to teach the people about his god and his culture. Soon, however, he realized that the Pirahã had no need to change and he gave up trying to convert them. At first he thought their simplicity was culture shock from early contact with the Europeans. Indeed, the Pirahã had been in contact with the Portuguese since the 1700s. They, as well as other tribes, had suffered disease and conflict from the hands of the foreigners. Everett wondered whether the Pirahãs had tried to eliminate the source of bad — Europeans and their culture — and remained true to their roots as a reaction. Instead, he discovered that they were perfectly content to live how they had for generations. They were satisfied, so continued their lives of subsistence fishing and hunting in the rainforest.

Of course, he may be exaggerating his findings to a certain extent. I agree with Noam Chomsky and the other linguists who say that Everett is capitalizing on the story of the Pirahãs. The profundity of some of his discoveries may be overestimated. For one, it does not take an Amazonian tribal culture to call into question the structures of language. I believe Everett conveniently ignored some cultural differences had been discovered elsewhere. Their inability to count could be attributed to a simple misunderstood question. Everett’s book is similar to accounts of wayward Western explorers in the nineteenth century who misunderstood indigenous cultures rather than making significant findings.

Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes opens with Everett’s journey to the Pirahã village, followed by an in-depth study of their language. The main theme of the book is culture’s influence on language. The book may be worth reading for someone interested in anthropological linguistic theories, so the average teen may not find Don’t Sleep very engaging. I gave the book a 2.5-star rating because it is simply too long. Everett packs his book with experience upon experience, without any story development. I would recommend it to someone interested in linguistics, anthropology, or controversial theories and theorists. This book is best suited for a mature and patient reader.

These days, Everett works as the Dean of Arts and Sciences at Bentley University in Massachusetts. A couple of decades after encountering the Pirahãs, he discontinued his missionary activity. After being influenced by the nonreligious Pirahãs, Everett became an atheist in the 1990s. In some ways, the Pirahã tribe affected Everett more than he affected them. He has written several other books, mostly on the subject of language and linguistics.

Language is a great part of our culture. Our perceptions of the world have much to do with the expressions and phrases that we use every day. Everett’s experiences teach us that we must broaden our perspectives in order to fully comprehend situations from different points of view, and to understand the essence and truth of our humanity.

In a KidSpirit Media review, teen writer Krishna Rao gives his take on linguist Daniel L. Everett's book Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle.

Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck addresses the fundamental question: what is, and is not, the truth about a culture or a group of people?

If we only hear a single dialogue about race, how can we better understand what is or is not “really” Asian, “authentically” American or, in this case, “truly” Nigerian?

Adichie’s stories have an answer: she insists that a person is comprised of more than just a single perception. The collection is a series of narratives set around the world, each only a few pages long and tied together with the central theme of the nature of truth which begins by recounting a young Nigerian with a stealing problem. When the police catch him taking jewelry from his neighbors, he is sent to jail and faces the corruption of the Nigerian officials, as his family struggles to bribe the local leaders to set him free. Though he enters his sentence as a privileged university student, he leaves broken and silent, influenced by the suffering he has witnessed. In another story, a young woman loses her boyfriend when his plane crashes while traveling to visit his family in Nigeria; while another is about a woman who leaves Nigeria for America and communicates only by sending letters with money back home.

The title of the collection is the name of one of her stories, which relays the stereotyping Adichie herself found when she came to the United States and discovered that generalizations choked her ability to be herself. Adichie repeatedly references the problems her country faces with its government and economy, and broader themes of these societal issues run throughout her novel. However, this is not the focus of her work.

Rather, Adichie’s stories revolve around the fundamental idea that issues of class, generalizations, and socioeconomic disparities are not unique to a single culture. Many of her tales depict a society that may be surprisingly familiar. In one, a young Nigerian woman studying at Princeton meets a young man she eventually realizes is gay. In another, she visits her family in Nigeria with her American boyfriend and discovers cultural differences that exist between his perception of her background and her understanding of what it is really like. All of the characters, whether set in Adichie’s native Nigeria or in an elite setting in the United States, showcase the complexity of a single individual.

Much of the book is based on Adichie’s own life. Like one of her characters, she was born in the Nigerian college town of Nsukka. At age 19, she moved to the United States for college and found success with her earliest novels, Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun. The Thing Around Your Neck is built upon the experiences Adichie had with her earlier publications, as she came to realize that the Western perception of Nigeria was far different from how it was portrayed in the media. As Adichie explains, “I come from a conventional, middle-class Nigerian family. My father was a professor. My mother was an administrator. Yet if I had not grown up in Nigeria, and if all I knew about Africa were from popular images, I too would think that Africa was a place of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals, and incomprehensible people, fighting senseless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS, unable to speak for themselves and waiting to be saved by a kind, white foreigner.”

Throughout the collection, Adichie frequently references these misperceptions of the Nigerian story. In one section of the book, a young woman brings her work to a professor who tells her that her story doesn’t portray the massacres in Congo accurately. When the young writer tells this professor that her stories stem directly from her own experiences, the professor acts condescendingly and refuses to listen.

In Adichie’s own life, questions of how she was and was not “authentically” African arose as she progressed as a writer. As she says, “One professor told me that my characters were too much like him, an educated and middle-class man. My characters drove cars. They were not starving. Therefore, they were not authentically African.” Yet while some critics say that the book is too “middle-class,” through the juxtaposition of her stories readers can experience the multi-layered nature of Adichie’s culture.

The varied voices in Adichie’s book prove that we must look at multiple stories in order to properly understand a group of people. When we don’t, we risk the trap of generalizations. As she writes, “Every time I am home I am confronted with the usual sources of irritation for most Nigerians: our failed infrastructure, our failed government, but also by the incredible resilience of people who thrive despite the government. Both sides of this story matter.”

Her short story collection largely accomplishes this goal by vividly illustrating the breadth of what makes something Nigerian. By placing her characters in different situations and having them face issues not always associated with African culture, the reader is forced to consider what is “truly” African in a new light. It is an eye-opening read, whether you know a lot about Nigeria and have a personal connection, or, like me, picked up this book by chance and thought that the title sounded interesting. The book is probably best read when one is at least a young adult, both because of a few graphic references in the novel (such as descriptions of jail conditions in Nigeria), and because the book is most enjoyable when one is equipped with a basic understanding of Nigeria, colonialism, institutionalized racism, and the immigration controversies taking place in the United States. In other words, with a world history class, most readers should be good to go. Adichie uses a mixture of dialogue and a deeply personal narrative style, sometimes illuminated through short, clipped sentences when writing from her first person point-of-view. It is a fast read.

Ultimately, Adichie’s novel is relevant to individuals of all cultures.

My life is made up of many different stories, and the perspective gained from a single chronicle cannot accurately summarize all of who I am or what I believe. People, especially in an increasingly multicultural world, are more complicated than that, and this idea 
— that we cannot understand the truth about an entire culture from a single viewpoint — is central to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s excellent short story collection, The Thing Around Your Neck.

In a KidSpirit Media review, teen writer Caie Kelley shares her thoughts on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck.

The Thing Around Your Neck: A Review

There was a day when the sun forgot to rise,
and confusion was creeping. The people
didn’t go to their lives, and
stayed home instead, watching

the sky. Alarms were shut off
the glow of the time creating
a mist. The dark
was in every room

feeling crisp and slightly cool
as the people failed to push it away.
Coffee was never brewed
teeth were never brushed,

hair was never combed,
pajamas were never rolled, tightly.
The ones scared of the dark cried
and prayed to a god and called

to a mother. Meetings
were canceled and lies
to keep sane were
whispered to someone younger.

When the ears were pressed through
the cracks of the doors:
anxiety. Delusion entered each
corner, while the people

waited. Neighbors were never
seen, their movements
hidden and their breaths
quick. They knew something

went wrong
this was all a mistake,
the sun was just running late.
But I could tell it forgot

when the stars stopped their dance,
and began their search.
The moon stood and waited,
naive and excluded. Seeing

none of the faces, of the ones
in their rooms staring at the moon.
They deemed it the night hero,
asking it for light.

when the world was unified
when the people mourned
and all was silent.

In a KidSpirit poem, teen writer Charlotte Rauner tells of the day the sun forgot to rise.

When the Sun

Truth. It is something you can wear emblazoned on your chest with a cape flapping in the wind behind you. It is a true superpower.

We think of superpowers as unattainable, as figments of our imaginations. However, these gifts are available to all of us. The other day, a speaker at my Quaker meeting told us that we each have a gift, whether big or small. Some of these gifts are not as noticeable as others. One of my gifts is my religion.

I am a Quaker. Twice a month, I sit in a room surrounded by windows and a ceiling fan that spins lazily. The only audible noise is traffic rushing outside, yet the room is filled with people of all ages. We sit in chairs facing the center of the room, so there seems to be no front or back. No minister stands at a pulpit, reading from the Bible. In fact, no one speaks at all until someone is moved by the Spirit to share a message. Messages can be stories, quotations, or even questions. Here in this space we are equal in spirit and in mind. There is no one telling us what to do. We sit in utter silence except for the sounds of the lazy fan and the cars outside.

This silence provides time to reflect and discover the gifts inside of us. While sometimes that quiet gets drowned out by messages or even by internal whines of boredom, we can find silence in other places. There is a quote on my refrigerator at home:

“Peace. It does not mean to be in a place where there is not noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.” – Unknown.

Quakerism has helped me discover my superpowers. It supplies the tools and values for not only leading a happy life but a fulfilled one, especially if you contribute your gifts to the wider community. Quakerism is a religion that encourages:

The SPICE mantra keeps me grounded. It gives me the tools to access my gifts while I seek the truth. Some people spend their whole lives looking for truth, the ultimate superpower. Why? Truth can take us places. It can lead us to conclusions or back to beginnings. Truth can be our best friend or our worst enemy. Truth can slap us in the face and leave us spinning, unsure where to turn next. Yet, through the power of reflection, we can find truth right beside us. The power of reflection is something that continues to astound me, and I hold it very close to my heart.

Whether by attending an organized meeting for worship or simply the act of standing back and observing, Quakers revel in the personal evaluation. Silence helps us access our inner light, which is a place of clarity and purity. Through this reflection, gifts become clear as you see yourself from the outside. You can see your actions undiluted through Quaker values. Was that simple or peaceful or honest? Did I do that for the greater good of the community? Everything seems to fit into a section of the SPICE mantra.

In a KidSpirit Interfaith Connections piece, teen writer Gracie Griffin how her Quaker tradition has impacted her search for truth and meaning. 

The Ultimate Superpower

Is truth absolute? How do we recognize what is true? How can we access our truest selves? These questions reappear at every stage of life and are the vortex of KidSpirit’s global community of truth-seekers in this issue.

The Nature of Truth Group Guide

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