My journey to where I am today in terms of how I think began with one sentence uttered by a Pope. “The truth has nothing to fear.”

Where that lead me is probably not what he had in mind, but dwelling on it made me realize that it didn’t matter what I believed. It only mattered what was true.

The truth can withstand anything. No challenge will change it. No question will unravel it. It will be what it is even if it’s never discovered. If we don’t search for it and do what we can to find it, it will still be there, hidden and unknown.

It will wait patiently for eternity simply because that’s what truth does.

The truth neither feels nor has any obligation to comfort me. It doesn’t  beckon me. If I am uncurious and unquestioning, it won’t care. If I tell myself lies, it won’t care. If I can convince some or even all to believe lies, it won’t care.

In order for it to be revealed to me, I have to care about it. It doesn’t have to care about me.

You and I could work every minute of every day for the rest of our lives and still only find small pieces of it that make up just a sliver of a thread in its tapestry our minds can’t touch the sides of.

There are galaxies beyond our reach  too great in number to fully comprehend and we know nothing about them.

And they don’t care either.

Maybe it’s silly to search for the truth just to hold a few grains of it in your hand until you or your memory of them  fade away. But in that moment, to know you learned something about what is, to know that you caught a peak behind the curtain of the mind boggling mystery that is having been alive for a time in the cosmos?

Well, heck. How cool is that?

But the truth doesn’t really care.  It’s all up to us to care about it.

Ken Robert is a guy who can’t not write, writing things he can’t not say. If you can’t not read them, click here and sign up for free updates.

Photograph: Policy of Truth