I have been thinking a lot about truth lately.

I mean, how can we weed through the millions of bits of information coming at us all the time through the internet, social media or reading? Or what is shared through our favorite news media? Or what friends and family tell us?

How do we narrow all that information down to the truth? Turns out that truth is more elusive than what we think.

What is true and believable is often proven or disproven through our senses. But we know things do exist beyond our senses. Infrared light, for instance. How do we know it exists? Through the technology of infrared cameras and night vision goggles.

Albert Einstein was a student of truth. Einstein famously said, “the search of truth and knowledge is one of the finest attributes of man, though it is often most loudly voiced by those who strive for it the least.”

Do you remember Einstein’s famous equation? E=MC2 — energy (E) equals mass (M) times the speed of light (C) squared (2).

What exactly does this have to do with truth? I am glad you asked. Concisely, the equation says, “The motion of one thing is relative to the motion of everything else.”

Einstein was particularly interested in the speed of light. Stay with me here for a minute. Light speed is calculated to be 186,282 miles per second (figured out by very smart people — you can google it to find out more). Space being so vast is why astronomers measure distance of objects in space by light years.

For example, if we identify an object being one light year away from earth, we are saying traveling at light speed the light of that object would take one earth year to reach us. That’s approximately 5.88 trillion miles. Because it takes one year, that object could have gone dark prior to the light of it reaching us. Before you stop reading out of boredom, that’s just a fun fact — no need to be overly concerned about it.   

What does that have to do with truth? It goes back to the fact that we reach our conclusions of truth via our senses. But just as in the example of the object being one light year away, we are only sensing what the object looked like one year ago — not in its current state.

Honest confession here: I never really liked math until college. I had to overcome those negative voices from my past that told me I would never be good at math. But it was my mom who taught me a lot about math and its value. Permit me take a little detour on what is true to reiterate what I have pointed out in other columns about your personal truth. Do not believe negative people and how they define you. Trust those who believe in you and know you, not those who judge you for what they believe you to be. They do not know you and never have. Instead, define yourself by the love feedback you received from those who truly knew and know you. Not those who do not.

Back to truth in general. People go about their daily lives with verisimilitude often missing. Which gives way to beliefs that may not represent the truth but may look like it does. If you have ever believed something to be true and later find out it is not, then you have experienced this dilemma. To get to truth, Einstein emphasized the importance of empirical evidence and observation, not just postulation and beliefs.

We need to constantly question our presumptions to be open to new viewpoints. Do we then make our own truth based on what we expect the truth to be? The answer is maybe and yes.

Oddly enough, these are things I think about before going to sleep at night. To be true seekers of truth, we must be open to the possibility that we may be wrong, however uncomfortable that may be.

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Richard Stride is the current CEO of Cascade Community Healthcare. He can be reached at docrs53@gmail.com.