Kindness and the Truth About How You Feel

I recently finished reading Graham Greene’s 1948 novel The Heart of the Matter. A story about a failed marriage and the corruption of a British colonial policeman in Sierra Leone during the Second World War, Greene penned a wonderful observation about truth in human relationships, when the main character’s unhappy wife says:

‘I’ve known it for years. You don’t love me.’ She spoke with calm. He knew that calm—it meant they had reached the quiet centre of the storm: always in this region at about this time they began to speak the truth at each other. The truth, he thought, has never been of any real value to any human being—it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and ties are worth a thousand truths. He involved himself in what he always knew was a vain struggle to retain the lies.

Sometimes human relationships rest on myths. While this novel is about a marriage, I cannot help but think of this idea’s application to a body politic. At some point, saying that you love America means you have to pretend that you love the fellow countrymen with whom you disagree.

Eric Shierman lives in Salem and is the author of We were winning when I was there.