BUT IT’S A GOOD SAW!

Here is an old saw.
You’ve used it many times, for many purposes. It has helped you build your temples. It has helped you build the gallows. It has helped you build bridges as well. You’ve used it as a measuring stick, a musical instrument, an instrument of torture, a mirror to look in (when it’s patina was still shiny), a wedge to drive between brothers.
It is a tool. It is a tool that’s cut down the trees to make books, many, many books about the truth, as you see it. It is a tool that has been at your side since the very beginning: you know it on sight; your grip on it is a familiar one. Blindfolded, you’d know the heft, the feel of it from any other. Your heart sang as its teeth ripped the bark, or the flesh, the simple one-two beat of the chord its steely length ululates.

But it has grown worn with use. Its teeth are dull, rust pits the metal hide: too much liquid has spattered across the glossy sheen, and its days are numbered to be fewer with use.

It is time to find a new tool, a less damaging one.

But it’s a good saw, you say. It’s helped me build; it’s helped me destroy. It is like a brother to me. I know the sound of its teeth, the song of its metal heart, the feel of its grip. I don’t want to discard it. I sleep with it at night.

No, it’s old. It must be discarded. Thrown away. Sentimentality and nostalgia are for people, not for tools, not for equipment, not for abstract simile, not for philosophy, not for debate, not for religion. If it is not people, and it is worn to the very nub, throw it away.

Truth is in the beating heart, the flowing pulse, in life.

Truth is not a tool.