Truth or dare? Truth. That was always my answer. I was afraid of the dare. Who knew what one of my friends’ little 14-year-old-minds could come up with? I knew what I could come up with and that scared me enough to keep me from ever answering with “dare.” The unknown is wild and exciting, but more than that it is quite frightening. Whenever one of my friends was feeling more courageous and answered “dare,” there followed a collective and sustained “OOHHH!” We all became excited, and even nervous, for this heroic, young risk-taker.
Fast-forward a few years and here we are today, still playing that game, still answering that question. And often we still answer with the all-too-safe “truth.” The irony is that we are, whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not, people of the dare. To live is to accept one dare or another. Existence requires it. But ever since we were young we were made to think there was a safe way out. I’m here to say: there’s not.
A dare is a call to a particular action. It is obvious (and also obviously suppressed) that our lives are made up of a collection of particular actions over a period of time; and that these actions form us. Our very beings are formed by the dares we take on. It is not my hope that this will make you think about taking on a dare sometime, in fact this wouldn’t even make sense for me to hope for. No, my hope is that you realize that you have no choice but to take on dares. So, affirm the dare. Be daring.
Now let us humbly converse with the other option: truth. In all my affirmation of the dare I do not intend to, in any way, eclipse or trivialize truth. I only mean to point out the misunderstanding of truth, this all-too-safe “truth”. In Twilight of the Idols Nietzsche reminds us that “only thoughts reached by walking have value.” He did not mean that we must literally be walking around to have valuable thoughts (though I do not think this is a bad practice … maybe classes should have walking routes as opposed to classrooms). I think he was trying to suggest that as existing individuals the truth and the dare are very much related.
What is this relationship? I’m not going to pretend to know the complexities of it, but I will humbly speculate this: the truth about who you are is not the truth about who you are unless it motivates the dares that you choose to take on; and the dares you choose to take on will form the truth about who you are. You may be thinking, “Hey, that’s super circular though.” Well, you’re right! That is why there is a need for the gift of Grace in order for existence to take place.
This gift of Grace also happens to be the ultimate example of this relationship between the truth and the dare: that The Truth took on the greatest dare of all; that is, The Truth became a person of the dare. All this time we’ve been thinking that answering “truth” was the safe option, but that is only because we have dressed truth up in many costumes and suffocated her, so she is neither recognizable, nor mobile, nor alive. Sounds strangely familiar? Do you recall the historical account of The Truth? The point is this: truth is dangerous!
In the same way that a financial manager acknowledges that there is a certain amount of systematic, non-diversifiable risk involved in any investment, we must acknowledge that there is unavoidable risk that comes along with existence. One basic risk in the relationship of truth and dare is the risk of hypocrisy. Often times I find myself afraid to act because I know I can’t live by the all-too-safe truths I hold. But this is hypocritical in the most fundamental sense. It is a way of living and acting (or not acting) that implies “I don’t exist,” when the truth is, I do.
We must not be afraid of these risks. We must acknowledge the uncertainty of life. By affirming this, we enable ourselves to live more truthfully, to make better decisions about the dares that we take on. So, truth or dare? Dare, you say? I dare you to become a person of the dare. I dare you to exist.