Among the things they don't teach at school is how to tell fact from fiction.
The more you depend for your information on hearsay - teevee, magazines, papers and, increasingly, the internet - the more fact and fiction become literally indistinguishable. While a majority of hearsay is honest and well intended, other times - quite often - the information conveyed is manipulated.
Governments, corporations, religions, news outlets and con artists engage in self-serving and deceptive strategies, hide or distort, and present fiction as fact. For having been a cigarette smoker for many years, and a tax payer for all my life, I know what I'm talking about.
The ability to tell fact from fiction is important because in it's absence you risk to adopt false beliefs, and false beliefs in turn can seriously impede your growth as a human being. It's been said that a hundred-foot tall oak tree, if it had a human mind, would only grow ten feet tall. While it's of course impossible to proof, most people immediately sense there's truth in it.
The ability to tell fact from fiction is dependent upon the ability to be completely honest and objective with yourselves and to see the world as it really is, not as you wished it were. It's the most important quality of leadership and allows you to deal with the facts exactly as they are, before attempting to solve a problem or make a decision.
Telling fact from fiction deals with reality and the truth, which doesn't make it easy. After all, 99 % of reality is invisible. Sometimes it's merely an illusion, other times it isn't all you imagine it to be. Reality is not always the most likely outcome, but it always has a way of intruding. Even though it is not the most comfortable of rides, I encourage you to go for it all the more so. For one thing, a love which cannot bear to be faced with reality is not a real love, so even you're ability to love yourself depends on it. On the plus side, if you love yourself and are in touch with reality, you are never disappointed. When you swap your illusions for reality, when you drop what could or should be for what is, life becomes meaningful. It's way worth the prize. Give it try. Just do it.
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Bonjour Beat,
Facte et Fiction, quel sujet?, vous le décrivez bien, il est possible d'en parler des heures durant.
Si la réfléxion nous est enseignée, tout désagrément, devient un plus pour la suite de notre vie.
Salutation. Liliane
Liliane, vous avez tout a fait raison. La réfléxion c\\'est pour la vie, ce qu\\'est l\\'exercise pour le corps.