So, yesterday would have been Princess Diana's fiftieth birthday. I'm a day late, and sorry about that. I've thought of her several times this week.
Her image is on the cover of at least a couple of magazines, including Newsweek, which put her on their cover next to Kate Middleton. She's on the cover of a commemorative edition of Life magazine as well. In addition, she is the subject of a new novel written by Monica Ali entitled "The Untold Story," which explores the idea of a Diana who survived the terrible crash in Paris and subsequently faked her own death in hopes of living a simpler and more peaceful existence. The novel is causing a little bit of a stir in the UK, and some people believe it to be tacky. I'm torn.
On the one hand, I understand that Diana has a family who would give anything for one more day with her, and someone exploring this painful wound so publicly and fictionally is an unwelcome reminder that there never will be another day with her. On the other hand, the idea that Diana lives on is not truly a myth or story, because for those of us who admired her and followed her, up close, or from a distance, she most certainly lives on in our hearts. There is the legacy of her two boys, the legacy of her charitable and humanitarian work, the legacy of her beauty, and the legacy of relation and understanding that made her "The People's Princess."
The controversy over this novel, and the speculation over what she might look like at fifty started me thinking about something else--truth. What is the truth? I think that there are different kinds of truth.
In recent months, another controversial author returned to the spotlight--more like the afterglow, given that his most recent media appearance was in two of the final episodes of the Oprah Winfrey Show. James Frey, author of "A Million Little Pieces" sat down with Oprah to talk about what happened in his life after the televised "lynching" he endured after confessing that portions of his memoir were embellished and fluffed up to make his story more interesting for the reader. I've never read "A Million Little Pieces," but I understand it to be Frey's memoir about dealing with drug addiction and recovery. James Frey had a drug problem. He struggled with it and he recovered. The spirit of the memoir is no less true because he did what we all do--he pushed the lines of anecdotal information so his audience would find his story more meaningful and entertaining. The result he sought to achieve was to give others suffering in the same struggle hope that they might also be able to recover. Setting aside pieces of his truth that might have gotten stretched in the process, Frey says he still hears from readers that his story has meaning for them. "A Million Little Pieces" is true.
The controversy over truth and stretched truth also reminds me of the 2003 Tim Burton movie "Big Fish." In "Big Fish," Edward Bloom is a master of "tall tales." His son Will is confounded after discovering what he believes to be proof that his father's stories aren't true. As Edward spends his final days in a hospital bed, he insists to Will that his stories are absolutely true. After his death, Will begins to discover little pieces of truth that bring veracity to his father's tales. He finally comes to realize that for his father, every bit of every tale he ever told was true--it's a matter of feeling and a matter of perspective.
No matter what we know to be true about ourselves and others, truth is relative. Truth is fragile and slippery. Just this week, I dealt with the consequences of someone else's truth. A simple conversation I had with someone turned into something that hurt and frustrated me, as well as planted the seeds of harm and doubt in the minds of others. We can't control other people's versions of our truths, no matter how we might try. Even the smallest germ of information, when planted in fertile soils, can blossom into something we never anticipated or intended--good or bad.
And so truth becomes malleable, and it serves its purveyor's purposes. The risk of our own truths being stolen can make it tempting to never share any part of ourselves, for fear that those small pieces of ourselves will be reshaped and we won't recognize them in the hands of others. That's the challenge of life--knowing when it is worth it to take those risks, and knowing when, in the hands of others, the truth of who we are is nothing more than a lie.
http://youtu.be/vGVGove7IsI
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