?
Oh guilty as charged. I finally had to stop avoiding the truth because it was destroying me mentally. I honestly wouldn't wish how I was feeling on anyone.
No
No
In my experience, "truth" is very complicated because anything beyond "water is wet" or "ripe oranges are orange" (see, we already introduced the complication of temporal variance) means many factors interact to produce our understanding.
As for "avoiding pain", perhaps a more accurate description is "avoiding effort." We go through life modeling reality using heuristics which provide us 90% of the benefit of "truth" with 10% (or less) of the mental effort of determining what the "truth" is. That frees up our minds to binge-watch "Game of Thrones" or whatever we'd rather be doing than judicious study of discernible reality.
It only brings pain if there is a reason. The truth is. Period. It doesn't bring anything but enlightenment. It is like God Himself. There is only pain if you brought it to the table yourself. Not God's nor Truth's fault.
“The truth is not always beautiful, nor beautiful words the truth.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
