Partial Truths

It is very interesting how things get shared sometimes. Someone starts sharing a story and filling us on all of the gruesome details. Perhaps their storytelling skills are so good you cannot even take your attention away. Their facts are totally believable too, accept you find out later not all of the facts were included. Sometimes you think you are getting the whole story, when you are only getting the partial story or someone perspective of what happened.

There is still another person that should have been mentioned or a detail disclosed, that could change whole situation. Maybe the storyteller didn’t mean to change the story. They just missed an item or two that were probably more valuable than they thought.

Possibly, the storyteller did tell the whole truth based on their perspective. Perhaps, they didn’t realize that Sara was on the phone the whole time or that the group had eaten there before. So their story was totally valid, in their head.

However, another phenomenon also exists, the exclusion of facts. This is done intentionally and deliberately, the storyteller knows exactly who or what will be left out of the story. Their goal is to have you see the story as they would have, had it happen.

Most people do this in order to protect their audience. For example, a guy tells a friend of his that he didn’t catch any fish this past weekend. Of course he did catch some, but his friend couldn’t come, and he just didn’t want to brag. Plus, he already ate his catch so no one will know. Just to clarify here, I am not saying that it is okay to do this, I am just letting you know that it happens.

The other intentional reason of excluding facts is to protect the storyteller. Maybe the child wasn’t supposed to be at the park. So if they exclude the fact that a seesaw was involved in the scraping of their arm, punishment will be avoided.

Sometimes in life, partial truths are used to manipulate someone into being what you want them to be or what you want them to think. Suppose the storyteller had lived a hard life, but didn’t want to burden their listener with the gory details or receive pity. So the partial truth is given instead. As a means of remaining light-hearted and breezy, even when the information they could share is very heavy.

Partial truth can also be given to spare the listener responsibility. One of the better examples of this is when a child asks, where babies come from. A lot of times this question is asked when the child is not at an area where they can handle the responsibility of knowing the full answer. So a form of the truth is given as substitute, to protect them from the weight of the true answer.

Like it or not, partial truths are here to stay. It can be very annoying, especially when you are on the receiving end, but they serve their purpose. They allow in one way or another, the message to be shared in its own special way.

As storyteller, we must remember our own frustrations when receiving partial truths and strive to share a more completed version of our stories or at least not leave out the important details. Then when we are the audience we need to make sure to be an active listener and ask te important questions that might make