Three realities:

yours, mine & truth—where the first 

two meet, so do we.

A THIRD ATTRITION

taylor underwater sculpture

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In a “how many jellybeans are in the jar” contest, let’s say you guess 1,000, I guess 789, and the judge count reveals the right answer to be 997. Being closest, you take home the candy. In my youth, I believed arriving at this third value mattered most. Our subjective experiences (or guesses) were only useful in triangulating the objective truth. Often I relied on the proverb of the three blind men who, through conversation, realized they were each touching a different part of an elephant. 
Experience however reveals that official judge counts happen only with the most trivial things in life, e.g. carnival games. And with relationship conflicts, getting someone to concede to your guess of reality is worth as little as a jar of jellybeans. Actually, it’s often worth less. You may hold onto your opinion and truth, and lose a friend. You may hold onto truth and a friend, but lose yourself. The happiest pair of people may be those who are wrong together (the moon is cheddar, the moon is swiss; at least they agree it’s cheese), choosing instead to lose the idea of truth. Whatever the case, of these three there will definitely be a third attrition. Does this haiku mean something different to you? Contact me!