The you in universal truth

THE funny thing about universal truths is that when it’s your turn, it feels like you’re the first person it’s ever happened to. I say this, writing a sentence I feel sure has been written thousands of times before.

Death is my favourite. My favourite example.

“Death comes to all of us.”

“Death is a part of life.”

Who are the people saying these things?

When the first really, really, really important person in my life died, it seemed like an entirely alien concept. Or, more fairly, something conceptual. It was a thing read about or seen in films. It could not happen to ordinary people like me.

I suddenly understood all the stories of people throwing themselves on top of caskets or having to be stopped from hurling their wilful bodies into open graves.

Traditional Hindus can’t be having with that. A blazing pyre be dangerous just on a windy day; you don’t want to play with throwing yourself at it.

But it’s not only death. Universal truths also have more moderate but far-reaching iterations. It’s the moment you understand an old saying that never made any sense before.

Like “every rope has an end.” Until you get to that point of your patience you’ll be – well – me. Of course the rope has an end. Even if you bought all the world’s rope. Even if, as you were buying it, more rope was being made, there would be an end. Because what the rope is up against is time. What with time being infinite and an abstract concept, rope doesn’t stand a chance.

One day you and a situation come to a point in your dealings. And you see that you’ve been holding the rope all the time waiting for a solution. And now you’re holding the frayed ends and that’s all you’ve got. That and time. And time still murmurs on into a future unfathomable.

I don’t make a habit of keeping a lot of rope around. The necessary one for the car. Odd bits for holding the house together.

String, on the other hand, is my thing. I can’t get enough of string. I have drawers and jars of string, twine, ribbon and all manner of tying things.

So recently, when the words, “I’ve come to the end of my string,” arrived unbidden in my head, I was greatly alarmed. Rats. So, this is it, thought I. The end of the infamous rope.

Jane Austen thought she knew a good one: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife,” the opening line of Pride and Prejudice, is a great set-up. The first six words are part of the stable of reliable introductions writers everywhere can jump on in a crisis.

But. No, Jane, no. You’ve led God-knows-how-many unfortunate girls down a pothole-filled road. And for what? So you could write a killer line? Ok, fair. I’d probably do it too if I had a line like that in me.

But the point is, such a man is in need of an investment broker and a good lawyer. Lesson: beware the thing masquerading as a universal truth.

Jane’s is an extreme example. It is comedy. But there are far too many pat phrases and old saws the world would have us believe are simply the way things are.

And they’re not. They’re not.

I do not accept that there is someone out there for everyone. In my marrow I know this to be a cruel lie.

Or the loathsome “this too shall pass.” Shall it? What if I pass before it does? No one bothers to say that too is a possibility. Because like it or not, not all things are get-overable.

I’ve been dragging a dark cloud across this column. Sorry. I genuinely do like finding myself at the moment of understanding a new thing everyone else seems to get but me.

What I’ve been reaching for is a way to say that what is offered by universal truths is a mirror of the world as I see it. There’s nothing that matches the feeling of being able to take your personal experience and set it in the context – in the company – of innumerable others. To be part of the big picture. There’s also something pure and precious about knowing when it just doesn’t fit. When no words or sayings mean what you mean. You be you. That’s fine.