Any group activity involves a blend of beliefs and truths.

Belief is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as: “a strong feeling that something or someone exists or is true; confidence that something or someone is good or right”.

Truth is defined as: “the true facts about something, rather than the things that have been invented or guessed”.

As you can see, belief is based on ideas or feelings, rather than real world experiences that can be witnessed, documented or proven.  Now, it is possible to form a belief after having real world experiences, but that does not make the belief, in itself, a real experience.

Here is an example:  A dog runs up and bites you.  This is a real experience.  You can use this experience to decide that dogs are bad, which is a belief.  But “dogs are bad” is not a real event.  Being bitten is the event.  The truth is:  a dog bit you.  The truth is not: “dogs are bad”.

If you love dogs and are willing to excuse the dog, you might try to deny the event.  “They didn’t mean it.”  Or “It was my fault.”  Those are also beliefs.  The facts remain that the dog bit you.

If you witness the event, your beliefs cannot change the facts.  If the dog bit your neighbor, you can say “They must have deserved it”, or “They are a bad person”.  Neither of those beliefs alter the actual fact that the neighbor was bit by a dog.

Now, let’s say you are in a group of dog owners.  You all love dogs and find enjoyment in being around others that have dogs and participate in dog activities.  Being around other people that have similar thoughts and feelings about dogs and dog ownership caused reinforcement of those beliefs.  If you talk to someone that does not like dogs, you may feel like you need to defend your beliefs.  You may find that the other person’s beliefs about dogs causes you to decide that you don’t like that person.  You may feel that there is “something wrong” with them because your beliefs don’t align.

One day, you notice that the person who does not like dogs has an injury.  They say that a dog bit them.  You, having beliefs about this person and about dogs, decide the following:

1. The person is probably telling a lie about the injury, blaming a dog for no good reason.
2. You know the dog in question, have never been bitten by the dog, consider the dog “a good dog” and that the dog would not have bitten anyone.
3. The person is “seeking attention” or is “just a complainer”, the dog bite was “not that bad” or the person must have done something to deserve getting bitten.

All of these are beliefs.  Having those beliefs collide with the truth of the dog biting the person is causing you discomfort.  Using that discomfort to try to deny the truth of the dog bite is victimization of that person.

Just because you don’t want to accept the truth of the dog biting the person, that does not mean you have the right to declare it did not happen.  Neither does it make anything you believe about the person, the dog, or the events into actual facts.  Beliefs are not truths.

There are also laws regarding how dog bites must be dealt with.  Those are truths that cannot be changed by beliefs.  Saying that those laws should not be enforced because of your beliefs is another victimization of the person bit by the dog.

Let’s say you decide to campaign for dog ownership as a way to address concerns by others about someone being bitten by a dog.  You make posters talking about how great dogs are, about the joy of having a dog and how you have never been bitten by a dog.  Although you never mention the person bitten by the dog, the entire reason you are doing the campaign is to try to minimize the facts of that person’s experience – another victimization.

What if you go further, and actually say that people that get bitten by dogs are attention seeking, are dishonest or other wise of poor character?  Now you are not only defaming the person that was bitten, you are defaming anyone who has been bitten by a dog, creating a general victimization.

Beliefs are not truths.

Beliefs are often used to attempt to deny truths.

When you deny truths, you victimize people.

A truth contains facts of actual events.  You can form beliefs based on a truth.  That still does not make the beliefs into truths.

What are your beliefs?  What are your truths?  Are you now able to distinguish between them?  How does this help you navigate your interactions with others?  Hopefully, you find this information is useful in establishing personal boundaries as well as respect for others.