Imaginary Therapy

The most frequent question my clients ask me is, ‘What’s wrong with me?’
In fact, just the other day Truth came to my office with that very question.
“What’s wrong with me?” Truth asked.
“Well, what seems to be the problem?” I responded.
“’What seems to be’?” Truth mocked. “That’s exactly it. Nowadays, everything‘seems to be’. Nobody is interested any more in what actually is and what actually isn’t.”
“It was just an expression,” I said.
“And that makes it all right? You can just open your mouth and it doesn’t matter if what you’re saying is accurate?”
“I was implying that there could be more than one way to look at things. So tell
me what your problem...is.”
“I’ve become an annoyance to people,” Truth told me.“ I’ve always been elusive and hard to know. But people used to make the effort to seek me out. Now, they could care less.”
“So you feel like...so you’ve lost your value?” I asked.
“I haven’t lost anything,” Truth said indignantly. “But people treat me like I just get in the way of their knowing what the world is really like.”
“And there’s no room in their world for Truth,” I observed.
“Exactly! Everywhere I go, l hear people saying that Truth is no different than
Opinion. Or worse, I find people saying Truth has been revealed to them, without any basis in Fact.”
“So you want my professional diagnosis?”
“Yes. What’s wrong with me?”
“What’s wrong with you is that you are now a Slippery Slope,” I said.
“A Slippery Slope? That’s a real diagnosis?”
“As accurate as any. First, you were an absolute. Next, you became relative. Then you became a construct in each person’s mind. Now, no one looks for you because they’re not sure you really exist.”
“But if there is no Truth, what happens to Facts? Are they now just Impressions
and Recollections?”
“You mean the who, what, where and when of things? A very Slippery Slope indeed,” I observed.
“Well, there will always be Data. No one can argue about that.”
“You mean Data from basic medical research? And Data about drug side effects? Unfortunately, Data can be an Invention. It can be whatever someone says it is.”
“You make it sound like becoming a Slippery Slope is an epidemic,” Truth exclaimed.
“If it’s any consolation,” I said, “the same thing happened to Honesty and
Integrity a long time ago.”
“But not everything is a Slippery Slope,” Truth said with optimism. “After all,
there is still Freedom and Justice.”