Kids, little ones, are so trusting of a person who cares for them. They have a natural desire to learn. They have humility to accept new information without criticism. So, to help them understand the truth, to use it to explain and predict, they need a paradigm, or way of thinking about what truth is.
The definition of truth can be summed up in what kids call, "real." They need to know that truth exists outside of us and also a different kind of truth exists inside our head. We need to try to make the truth inside our mind match the truth outside of us. So, we tell a story to explain.
"Let's pretend we are all grown up. And, you know what a street light is. The light is on top of a big steel pole that comes up from the ground. And let's pretend that we are driving a car. Now, the truth is that there is a street light pole by the side of the street where we are driving. But it is very foggy. We can not see the street light pole. We are driving very slowly because the fog makes it hard to see what is ahead of us. Then, suddenly, a little dog runs in front of our car where we are going. We don't want to hit the dog, so we turn the wheel to steer the car away from it. But, by accident, we go off the side of the road and hit the pole of the street light.
In our mind, we did not know the truth that the pole of the street light was there. While we were driving, what was real in our mind did not know about the danger from the street light. We were driving by what we thought was true. So, what we did made a new thing happen. We made the accident when we hit the pole. The accident was a new truth that came from the mistake in our mind.
The truth outside of us was that the street light pole was there. It did not change because we did not know about it. The truth outside of us (objective truth) did not match the truth inside our mind (subjective truth). However, when we had the accident, the two truths became the same to us.
So, what we think of as true inside our mind is important and so is the truth outside of us. We need to try our best to learn all we can. That way, the truth inside of us will be closer to the truth outside of us. This is important so that we don't have accidents and so that we don't make mistakes.
If we learn from other people and if we learn from our mistakes, we can help our minds find truth that matches the truth outside of us. This will avoid sorrow. And, it will help us build happiness.
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