The Truth Hurts

Recently (yesterday) I had someone tell me something about myself that was totally true. Undeniably true. I didn't deny it for a second. I nodded my head in agreement the minute the person said it. Yet the statement has plagued me since I heard it spoken. It was a fact of myself that I had known was there, and that I had been thinking about often in the past year, yet somehow, the words this person used caused the concept to strike me in an entirely new way. And I can't stop thinking about it.
The thing that bothers me the most about it is that I can't decide whether or not it is something I can change. Whether or not is something I should change.

Well, I hope that was vague enough for you!

But seriously, have you ever had that happen to you? I find it very likely that you have had someone tell you something that you just couldn't forget. Usually it something negative, like a critique, or if we are very unlucky, an insult. But in my case, it was a simple truth. Not even a truth I had been hiding from myself, but one I had pondered day after day.

I guess maybe the thing that scared me most is that what I had thought was my little secret, something I thought was very internal, was seen by someone else. Someone on the outside. In other words, I wasn't fooling anyone. And I thought I was at least maybe kind of fooling them.
Or maybe all this time I was just fooling myself.

The problem is, now that this truth has been acknowledged by someone other than myself, I am required to take action. Because I'm not the only one who knows about it now. So now I have a responsibility, not only to myself, but to this other person, to act on this truth about my character. And that just stinks, because I'm a procrastinator, and I wanted to put it off. But I can't. The time has come (the walrus said, to talk of many things...) to face up to this thing, whatever it is, and deal with it.

So here are my philosophical questions of the day: Do you have a "truth" in your life that you are trying to hide from? Has someone pointed out a truth to you that you didn't want to face? Is there something in your life that someone hasn't mentioned to you that you may need to address?
Chances are, it will take someone else saying something to really make you take the initiative to change. It clearly did for me. My only hope is that my wonderful philosophizing will encourage you to think about these things a bit.

I guess the moral of my story today is that the truth hurts, but it helps us grow. That's what I have been learning lately. : )