The First Casualty of War is…

“We breathe when we’re wrong, we breathe when we’re right, we breathe even as we slip off the ledge toward an early grave. It cannot be undone. So I breathe.”

-Tahereh Mafi.

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We got to the beach house yesterday. Jason was very cooperative the whole time, happy and a joy to travel with. But he does have social anxiety, and one thing that happens is that he is very conscious of perceived challenge. He thought a man in another car was making rude gestures to us, and his anger flared. I sighed a little: Daddy has work to do.

Anger is fear, remember. I have to help him love himself more, so that the opinions of others mean less. And to have more genuine confidence in his capacity to defend himself, so that mere gestures are not interpreted as an invitation to the Dance.

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“The first casualty of war is the Truth” is a famous statement (I think the more ancient one is “the first casualty of war is innocence” which is, ironically, somewhat opposed to the first statement).

The question of “what is truth?” is as old as perceptions. I’d bet animals have some version of it. “Absolute” truth is probably beyond any language, but it IS possible to point in the right direction. “Relative truth” is much easier to establish. “Useful” applied to all three Centers is pretty reliable, but even Newtonian physics, usually quite reliable, gets wonky if you look too close.