What Is true endures
Truth as an act of Love

 

 

 

 

 

Introduction – Truth as encounter

I used to think that truth was something you had to find — something lying somewhere outside of me, like a fact, an outcome or a certainty. But over time, I began to feel something different: that truth is not so much a thing, but something that happens. In contact. In encounter. In the gaze of the other who sees you without judgment. In the moment when something within you is finally allowed to exist.

 

The deepest wounds in my life were not inflicted by lies in the classical sense, but by the absence of recognition. By the lack of confirmation that what I felt, experienced and named was real. The pain was not in the difference of perspective, but in the denial of my inner world. Where truth was replaced by façade, projection or silence, I slowly fell out of reality. I became disconnected from myself.

 

Recognition may be the most fundamental form of truth we can receive as human beings. And not as a compliment or as validation of being right, but as a deeply felt experience: I exist for you, in my reality, as it is right now. And it is precisely here that truth touches empathy — the willingness to listen without correcting, to see without framing and to be without intervening.

 

Truth is not hard or cold. She is soft, vulnerable and relational. She cannot exist without encounter. Without closeness. Without the risk of being touched by what we would rather not see. Truth demands courage — but not only the courage to speak. Also the courage to listen, to receive and to acknowledge what is.

 

In this essay, I do not wish to capture truth, but to approach her. Not to define her, but to touch her — in her layers, her absence, her painful consequences and her healing potential. For whoever does violence to the truth does not only mutilate the other, but also themselves. And whoever gives her space opens a ground in which real connection can take root.

 

 

 

The layers of truth – Between fact, experience and encounter

What we call truth is rarely unambiguous. There are facts, feelings, stories — and somewhere in between moves what we experience as true. But truth is not a single layer. She is multi-voiced. Sometimes logical, sometimes bodily. Sometimes demonstrable, sometimes inexpressible.

 

On the most tangible level, truth is factual: an event that demonstrably took place, a statement that was or wasn’t made or a situation that can be objectively reconstructed. This layer provides a foothold. It is necessary to share reality, to settle disputes, and to safeguard the difference between fantasy and reality.

 

But truth is more than that. There is also the layer of authenticity: the truth of the inner life. What someone truly feels, thinks, experiences — even if it cannot be proven. This layer is fluid and subjective, yet no less essential. For what is a fact to one person may feel untrue to another, precisely because it does not resonate with their own experience.

 

And then there is relational truth — perhaps the most vulnerable of all. This is the truth that arises in contact: the question of whether your inner world is acknowledged by the other. Whether your experience is granted the right to exist, without being made subordinate to the other’s perspective. Relational truth is not absolute, but attuned. She lives between people, in subtlety, in tone and in timing.

 

These layers can reinforce one another, but they can also work against each other. A factual truth can feel untrue if it is presented without emotional attunement. An inner truth can be denied if it does not fit within the other’s narrative. And in relationships where empathy is absent, truth is quickly distorted — not because the facts are wrong, but because the experience is not acknowledged.

 

In my own life, I have often experienced what happens when these layers fall out of balance. When my emotional truth was dismissed as exaggerated, incorrect or irrelevant, I lost my sense of reality. Not because the facts were wrong, but because my experience was unseen. A subtle form of gaslighting emerges — not just through blatant lies, but through the gradual erasure of your truth.

 

The layered nature of truth therefore demands care. An inner stance that does not only wish to know what is true, but also for whom it is true, at what moment and in what context. Truth then ceases to be an absolute claim, becoming instead an ethical practice of attunement.

 

 

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The absence of truth – An existential fault line

Few things are as disorienting as the absence of truth. Not only the absence of facts, but above all the absence of recognition, attunement and genuineness. Truth is not a luxury. It is the ground of being. And when that ground is taken away from under your feet, what arises is not only confusion, but something far more fundamental: alienation — from yourself, from the other and from reality.

 

It often starts small. A memory that is denied. A feeling that is brushed aside. A subtle shifting of responsibility. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, you lose trust in your own perception. You start to doubt — not the situation itself, but yourself. Your intuition. Your right to feel what you feel.

 

In relationships where truth is structurally absent, a vacuum emerges. Especially in the case of covert narcissism or emotional manipulation, where reality is constantly rewritten to serve the self-image of the other. What you see and what you feel no longer match what is being said or done. And this dissonance eats away at your inner world — not only because the other lies, but because you are no longer sure you can trust yourself. That you can still be guided by your own feelings.

 

The absence of truth is not a neutral void. It works like a wedge within the self. You become estranged from your compass, your boundaries and your inner voice. And here lies the link with empathy: if no one truly attunes to your experience, your reality seems to cease to exist. Without empathy, truth becomes cold, distant, indifferent. But without truth, empathy becomes empty, without ground.

 

I have experienced this from the inside. In relationships where my words were twisted, my feelings denied, my silences interpreted as carrying meanings I had not placed there. What I felt was not only denied — it was replaced. By a story that was not my own. And slowly, I lost what was mine: my truth.

 

The consequences of such distortion are profound. It leads to self-alienation, dissociation, depression and anxiety. But deeper still, it undermines the possibility of real connection. For without shared truth, there can be no trust. And without trust, love is not possible.

 

That is why the absence of truth is no small flaw, but an existential fault line. It touches the core of our humanity. And whoever seeks to heal this rift must return to the most vulnerable place: the rediscovery of truth — within oneself, with others and in the world.

 

 

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Truth and empathy – A moral bond

Truth needs a voice to be heard. But it also needs ears willing to listen — ears that do not immediately seek to explain, correct or defend, but can remain present in open attentiveness. Where truth and empathy meet, something arises that goes beyond understanding: recognition.

 

Empathy is not sentiment. It is not a soothing gesture or a gentle tone. It is the willingness to truly meet the other in their experience — even when that experience is not your own. Even when it clashes with your perspective. Here lies an ethical practice: not filling in, not talking over, not pushing away what is uncomfortable. But staying still and listening to what reveals itself.

 

Without empathy, truth becomes a knife — it can cut without ground, without connection. But without truth, empathy becomes shapeless — a comfort disconnected from real attunement. Only when truth and empathy carry one another does humanity arise. Not as an abstract ideal, but as a concrete encounter: I am here, and I see you in what you authentically experience.

 

Philosophers such as Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas wrote about the encounter with the Other as a gateway to the ethical. But it is perhaps Edith Stein who most sharply named that empathy is not projection, but an attunement to the inner experience of the other — without losing oneself in the process. This form of empathy requires discernment as well as truthfulness.

 

In my own life, I have learned to recognize this in the most vulnerable moments: when someone did not try to fix me or reinterpret my experience, but simply stayed. In the silence. In the listening. In the trust that my truth could exist, even if it was different from theirs. Such moments were rare, but sacred — because they brought me back into contact with myself.

 

And so my awareness grows that truth is not only something we seek or speak, but also something we hold for one another. As a moral act. As an . For to truly acknowledge someone in their truth, we must be willing to be touched. And that takes courage.

 

 

 

The courage to be true

Truth does not demand absolute certainty. She asks for presence — the courage to remain standing in what you feel, think and experience, even when the world seems to have no space for it. Truth is not a possession, not a weapon, not a claim to being right. She is an inner alignment — a fidelity to what stirs within, even when it has not yet found words.

 

In a world brimming with façade, narrative and strategy, truth quickly becomes something uncomfortable — something that disrupts, that chafes, that exposes what would rather remain hidden. But it is precisely here that her strength lies. Truth brings light. Not to condemn or to pin down, but to clarify and to set free.

 

To be genuinely truthful carries risk. It may mean you will not be understood. That the other will withdraw. That silence will follow instead of affirmation. But the cost of betraying yourself is greater. For those who consistently abandon their inner truth eventually lose the compass that gives direction to their lives.

 

I have had to learn to dare to be true again. To reclaim my voice in a world where it was too often overwritten. To no longer doubt my feeling and to stop justifying them, but instead to inhabit them. And to see the truth that lives in me not as a threat, but as a source — as the foundation of connection, not despite its sharpness, but because of its honesty.

 

For truth is an act of love. An embodiment of fidelity — to yourself, to the other and to the space in between.

 

And whoever welcomes truth, even in her discomfort, opens the door to something greater: to a connectedness that is not built on illusion, but on reality.

 

In that ground, everything may exist. What is true may be. What is still searching, too. And perhaps that is, in the end, the most human place of all: where truth and empathy meet — not as an answer, but as an encounter.