Everything shown to the world is edited. That sentence was edited. That sentence even shows a way of editing. “Shown.” People “show” things to the world.

The first thing I thought of when writing this was that line from Fightclub, a shorter version of “With insomnia, nothing’s real. Everything is far away. Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy.” And that’s true of a lot more than just insomnia. Everything we express is a version of a version. And everything we think is an interpretation.

Everyone thinks a lot more than they say and do. Everyone self-edits. When someone asks you what you did during the day, you choose what you say and what you don’t say. You pick what you include and what you leave out. This is self-editing. You decide what you think is important and what you think is irrelevant. But what you decide is irrelevant could be a vital detail for someone else. And what we think is fascinating could be unbearably dull to another person.

We self-edit with things as innocuous as what we did during the day, and we do it with everything else, too.

The truth is what we show it to be.

There is more to me that what I write about in this blog. There are a lot of things that I’ve consciously or unconsciously kept from other people. And whether that’s a quest for privacy, a need for personal space, a desire for a different confidant, or any other possibility, what I tell people is a large part of how they know me. It’s their “truth” about me, even if it’s not all of me.

One person can have one truth while another person can have a completely different truth. it’s all in how we interpret the things around us. It’s in how we view the world, each other and ourselves.

The truth is based on our individual perspectives. No one gets a whole picture. Everything we see or hear or read is colored by our experiences, our past insights and reasoning, and our beliefs.

So, yes, the truth is edited. It’s edited in our minds before we express anything. And it’s edited in our minds as we receive the signals and stimuli from the world.