Everyone wants the truth.
We often say we can’t tell what’s true and what isn’t.
I say we can absolutely see the truth, but we’re way too close to it that it makes us blind.
In his superb book, ‘Rebel Ideas’, Matthew Syed narrates the true story of English football’s quest for answers. In 2016 a specialist team was gathered to analyse why one of the most successful nations in the game in England, with all its mega money and skilful players, the very founders of the sport, had not won a major trophy for 50 years.
That team though were only made up of one knowledgeable ex-international football player and pundit. The others were a founder of high-tech start ups, an Olympic administrator, the former head coach of the England Rugby squad, a top level cycling coach, and a female commander at the Royal Ministry Academy Sandhurst. Why then, when they were meeting to study and find an answer to such a huge problem in the national game, did they have only one (no longer playing) football expert?
Simple. The view was if you brought in other managers and football stars, they would provide the ruling FA with the same issues and awarenesses that the current manager and staff were already aware of as they were party to it week in, week out. There would be nothing new.
These football aces were far too close to the situation that they would not have the necessary perspective to work out where the shortcomings were. They would not be able to see the wood for the trees. Or the goal from the corner flag (Ok, bit cheeky that one).
It’s often obvious.
The truth is often in plain sight. It’s like the tale of the Emperor’s New Clothes where the crowd could ‘see’ he was wearing no garments but they would not truly recognise it even though it was right in front of them. It took an innocent young boy onlooker to identify what was glaringly obvious once he spoke up.
The background to the sad crash of Korean Airlines flight 801 in 1997 and the loss of 229 on board is another example. The plane has descended below the minimum safe altitude in mountainous terrain as the captain believed he was nearer the airport than he actually was with devastating consequences. Black box tapes show that neither the first officer nor flight engineer questioned the captain until six seconds before impact. Far too late to make a difference.
The investigation found that they considered the captain had been aware of the wrong height and would make corrections that he didn’t. The other insight was that Korean society made it offensive for subordinates to challenge a high ranked person despite the truth again be right in front of their eyes so they delayed until their own doom was upon them.
And so it goes with all of us. We can quite clearly see the truth most of the time but as we don’t step back enough from it or let others guide us to what we may be missing in our blind spot, we plough on making the same mistakes, errors, or missed opportunities. Or simply don’t smell the roses.
In the movie, ‘A Few Good Men’, Jack Nicholson’s character Colonel Jessep rages in court, ‘You can’t handle the truth’.
I believe we can handle it but as we’re far to close to it that we simply aren’t able to realise it’s right there in front of our eyes. Our own Emperor’s New Clothes.
Maybe it’s time we honestly looked!