It had taken a couple of hours of raking and weeding; inspecting each flower clump in the thirty by forty foot garden to see if it had lived through the winter and was ready for the great spring bloom.
I went into the house to comb the twigs out of my hair and rinse the dirt from my hands. As I held them under the tap a horrid sight met my eyes! Where there had been a diamond ring on my finger, there was now only a nasty twisted metal object poking up from the back of my hand. It took a moment to realize that it was the empty prongs which once had held my precious diamond aloft.
Of course my heart stopped. Not only was something of value gone, but it had been the gift of my husband and I could imagine his shock and hurt when he heard the news. I must get it back somehow, and before he returned from work.
I had just entered the house and gone straight to the kitchen sink so it must have been left in the garden. Where should I start looking? I tried to remember all my earlier steps, but I had walked over nearly every inch of the ground that morning, had kicked or dug around nearly everything. To compound the problem the garden was on a hillside, the day was windy and things were blowing about. Also the dirt was soggy; if the diamond had fallen onto the bare ground and I had stepped on it, the little stone would never be found again.
In the fear of doing irrevocable damage by walking out onto the damp ground, I sat down first to think. Did I remember anything odd? There had been a slight clinking sound when I had slipped on a hilly spot and grabbed at a section of chain fence for support; perhaps that was when my diamond made its escape. If I did not want to crawl all over the ground in a grid pattern with my nose ten inches from the dirt, that was the only place to start.
I stepped cautiously to the area next to the section of fence I had grabbed. At its base was a two foot pile of leaves which had been mouldering there since the previous fall. I had recently added to it. But there was no hint of a diamond lying on top.
My first impulse was to scrabble through the leaves. But then the top leaves were dry and any movement might encourage the wind to take them away and the diamond with them. It would be better to dig slowly, like an archaeologist, saving scraps and mislaying nothing.
I fetched a cardboard box, and removing one leaf at a time from the pile, filled it cautiously and then dumped the contents onto a cleared flat space at the other end of the garden, looking at each leaf a second time in case I had missed something. The diamond was less than a carat in weight and roundish, so that it could roll away easily.
An hour or so went by quickly. The dry leaves were all gone and from now on down to the damp ground were only blackened partly decayed leaves, which tore on contact. Suddenly I caught sight of a sparkle in the blackness! I dove for it, but it disappeared at once in the disturbance made by my eager fingers. I had to start again, for my careless rush had hidden it deeply. I went back to my plodding method, cheered however by the knowledge that I was on the right track. I dug for another half hour, willing myself to be patient.
At last there was another sparkle! I peeled the leaves away from all sides until it lay revealed - its shape, its position. I trembled. If I reached too quickly would I miss it again? Could my hands be trusted?
Using a small spoon fetched from the kitchen, I lifted the diamond carefully and carried it slowly into the house. Only there did I dare touch it and place it in an envelope and place that envelope in another one, well licked and labelled.
I was proud of my success, as well I might have been, for I have since heard the sorry tales of other women who lost their diamonds in the garden or down the sink or Lord knows where. If I had hunted for it with enthusiasm instead of guile it might easily have been lost forever.
But I have always been a curious and careful investigator. As a child I preferred detective stories and romantic tales of hidden treasure, dreaming of becoming either a detective or an explorer sunk in the mysterious tombs of Egypt. But limited by motherhood and housekeeping I could only read the Archaeological Review and investigate the lives of my neighbors.
I never uncovered anything of consequence, but the discovery of even a small truth hidden behind bland appearances brought me a curious happiness. I have always been in love with the idea of Truth and so I am a very poor liar, blushing, stammering so that everyone can see. I early decided that I was such an untalented liar that I would only get into trouble if I set out on that route.
I watched other people tell lies with special interest. The wide-eyed innocent stare, the almost imperceptible trembling of the neophyte, the silence, rather than the answer, in which the liar would transmit the music of falsity, audible not only to dogs and cats but to any alert human. The great detective was always at work watching for the misleading word; the clue to the hidden truth.
Not long ago my husband and I attended a seminar at our local University on the subject of lying. Sisela Bok, a lecturer on medical ethics at Harvard Medical School, had written a book on the subject in which she denounced the practice of lying from every possible angle, including the habit of lying about little harmless things, because it would eventually lead to self-deception and the resultant loss of a sense of reality.
The visiting lecturer, a professor from a smaller University, had chosen to refute her on psychological grounds and argued that "everybody" lied and so it was natural and right to do so. He had written a book to prove it.
This set my teeth on edge! So, along with most of the members of the Philosophy Department, we remained in the lecture hall after the talk, in order to debate the question with him.
He spoke of his background and studies in philosophy, then answered a few polite questions. I asked how on earth it was possible for him not to love the truth while he, by self-definition a philosopher, was constantly engaged as such in seeking out the truth. He replied that he did not love or seek out the truth and that he read philosophy only for his own amusement.
I wanted to know how he could possibly read the dense and uninviting prose of the philosophers, just for his amusement or indeed for any other reason except to learn some new truth buried deep within. I had found it so painful to read that compressed kind of writing that it made my brain squeak with the effort, and I mentioned the philosopher John Locke as a horrible example.
He answered smoothly that it was for his own amusement and pleasure that he read John Locke and he did not find him a bit difficult.
One of the professors remarked dryly at this point, "You are lying to us now, aren’t you?" Derisive laughter momentarily filled the hall.
He stiffened up and changed the subject. "What is Truth?" he demanded belligerently.
There was a suitable silence as no one wanted to start a debate on the sticky question of whether Truth exists or not. But I was busy remembering my patient digging for the diamond through the wet leaves.
I was smitten by a sudden inspiration and piped up, "Truth is the golden needle in the haystack!"
At this point the red-faced visiting lecturer suddenly and unconvincingly remembered that he had a plane to catch and walked briskly out the door!
I believe my spontaneous definition was the right one, for like the truth a golden needle is valuable, useful and twinkles cheerfully at you when you locate and recognize it. In searching for it, though you may stride forth on intuition and logical exercise, there is no substitute for patient sifting through either a haystack or a pile of leaves, or that mass of irrelevancy under which nearly every truth is hidden.
You may never find that needle using only patient search, but neither will you go off half-cocked, scattering accidental falsehoods all about, as I did with the leaves, and miss the goal in your hurry to snatch the shiny prize. And even though you are unsuccessful in your dull hunt, perhaps you may dispel some of the falsehoods stuck to the vegetation and show those coming later a smaller, less grubby pile with a brighter light shining through it because you have already removed some of the looser rubbish.
Ann Kucera
Ann : thank you for that - a lucid and important message entertainingly written. I dare say that philosophy can be entertaining as well as a serious seeking after truth. The thing I find testing about studying other philosophers is that, in an academic sense, its important to distinguish what they wrote (or said) from what is true. A philosopher can be important even though all (s)he wrote might be false, because the right questions might be asked or light shed on them by the admittedly incorrect procedure adopted to tackle them. I do think it important, though, that we read the great (or even lesser) philosophers for the light they shed on questions that interest us, not merely as a form of literary criticism. However, we mustn’t make them say what we want to hear.
Theo