Turning Up The Light: Discernment

Reprint:

Spiritual Aging: Turn Up the Light

“Nothing is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” — Martin Luther King Jr.

Every era has its blind spots. Ours, however, shows an uncanny ability for avoiding the light.

The truth of King’s warning shows up everywhere — not only in public life but in the small encounters of the everyday.

A rumor gains momentum before anyone checks it. A misunderstanding grows legs. A claim repeated often enough begins to sound credible simply because it’s familiar. By the time truth gets its shoes on, the damage is ten-thousand miles away.

Discernment isn’t always easy. But it begins with the simple act of pausing before accepting whatever story arrives first — or loudest. That pause was once our default, part of the ordinary rhythm of daily life. Now it has to be a conscious choice. Without it, reactions harden quickly, and opinions calcify before the evidence even enters the room.

Many older adults describe a shift they can feel. News once came with natural intervals — the evening broadcast, the morning paper, the weekly magazine. There was space to consider.

Now information arrives in a continuous rush, and the rush itself becomes a kind of pressure. Under that pressure, discernment doesn’t disappear; it thins. And when clarity thins, integrity has little to anchor itself to.

King wasn’t warning against ignorance as a lack of knowledge. He was warning against the danger of conviction formed without examination — belief that feels righteous because it is certain, not because it is true. Earnestness can be as dangerous as indifference when it’s not grounded in reality.

Problems like these can take root when we’re no longer paying attention.

“Who are you going to believe — me or your own eyes?” — Groucho Marx

Many people have been urged, at one time or another, to accept a version of events that didn’t match what they witnessed. It happens in families, workplaces, and public debates — anywhere memory is treated as negotiable. Groucho’s line captures that pressure with a twist of humor: the attempt to talk someone out of what they plainly see.

Discernment in those moments isn’t idealistic. It’s the grounded refusal to trade lived reality for someone else’s certainty. No argument is required; only the willingness to remain steadfast in what is factual.

Age often sharpens this foundation. With time, people learn to spot the difference between two honest perspectives and gaslighting that pushes them to doubt what they plainly see. Discernment operates like a safeguard here. It doesn’t escalate the disagreement. It doesn’t humiliate the other person. It simply keeps one anchored in what actually occurred.

Humor sometimes gets to the truth faster than argument. The space between a joke and a hard moment can be surprisingly small. Groucho’s line lasts because it captures that unsettling feeling of being told to ignore what’s right in front of you.

Discernment answers that pressure with steadiness, not surrender.

“The first step toward finding God, who is truth, is to discover the truth about myself.” — Thomas Merton

Most people carry two understandings of truth: the one shaped by expectation and the one shaped by conscience. The public truth keeps the peace. The private truth keeps the ledger.

Discernment begins where those two meet — in the quiet moments when a person acknowledges what they have been avoiding or explaining away.

Merton’s line points toward an old insight: a person cannot see clearly if their self-understanding is cloudy. They cannot judge a situation accurately if old injuries or fears are doing the interpreting. They cannot recognize truth if every uncomfortable fact is treated as a threat.

Self-honesty is slow work. It shows up in small recognitions — noticing when irritation is standing in for certainty, or when fear is shaping a conclusion, or when pride stiffens a stance that ought to bend. These recognitions rarely arrive fully formed. They come in pieces, and each piece adds steadiness.

Aging often makes this work easier. Pride loosens. Posturing loses its appeal. The need to perform gives way to the desire for alignment. Discernment depends on this shift. The more honestly a person can acknowledge their own shadows, the more accurately they can understand the shadows in others.

Self-honesty is not self-accusation. It is simply the refusal to distort what is true — even when that truth complicates things.

“If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will gladly change, for I seek the truth.” — Marcus Aurelius

Some people grow more open with age; others grow more fixed. Experience can widen perspective or harden it. Age alone doesn’t determine the path — only whether a person treats life’s lessons as invitations or as fortifications.

Discernment grows in the soil of openness. It deepens as defensiveness loosens. Many older adults describe a practical shift: less interest in scoring points and more interest in accuracy; less heat in disagreement, more attention to what truly settles a matter.

But it is a shift, not a certainty. Some lean into clarity; others retreat into certainty.

Still, age creates conditions that can favor wisdom. Patterns repeat until they become recognizable. Motives — one’s own and others’ — come into clearer relief. What once seemed urgent often reveals itself as temporary. Old conclusions sometimes show their cracks. Time becomes a patient teacher.

Aurelius’s line rests on humility: the willingness to revise a belief when better evidence appears. That willingness is not universal. It takes strength to release an idea held for decades. But when it does happen, space opens — and discernment needs that space.

In later life, discernment often looks like this: not rigidity but steadiness; not stubbornness but alignment; not resistance to change but the readiness to change for the sake of truth.

“Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.” — Joan Didion

Integrity is often spoken of as a grand virtue, but in practice, it is quieter. It begins with living in agreement with what one has already recognized as true.

Discernment without integrity becomes stranded — insight with no place to land. Integrity without discernment becomes rigid, even punitive. Didion’s line rests at their intersection: responsibility not as self-blame, but as alignment.

In daily life, integrity appears in small, often unnoticed decisions: choosing not to pass along a claim that hasn’t been checked; stepping away from conversations that feed division; offering a measured response when a sharper one would earn applause. These choices rarely draw attention, but they shape a life.

Integrity also shows itself in restraint. Not every falsehood needs pursuit. Not every injury needs a public response. Integrity judges which matters require engagement and which simply drain energy.

And in the personal realm, integrity asks for the willingness to admit when a conclusion came too quickly or when an old injury influenced a present reaction. These recognitions do not weaken a person’s standing; they strengthen it.

Discernment clears the path. Integrity walks it.

The Practice of Discernment

Discernment becomes real in the everyday: a headline, a comment, a disagreement, a story that feels a little too convenient. These small moments build the habit — or erode it.

The first practice is pace. Not slowness for its own sake, but a pause long enough to let the mind settle. A moment to sense whether irritation, habit, or fear is shaping the response.

The next is attention. Instead of asking whether a claim is agreeable, discernment asks whether it’s supported. It notices the emotional temperature. Was the message designed to alarm, flatter, or inflame?
The temperature often reveals more than the content.

Contrast helps too. When stories differ, the goal is not immediate judgment but locating the thin strand of agreement — a place to stand.

In relationships, discernment listens for history. It sees when a disagreement belongs to the present and when it carries older weight. It notices the person behind the words — not to excuse behavior, but to understand the terrain before forming conclusions.

And then there is repetition. When a story aligns a little too neatly with what someone already believes, discernment issues a gentle warning: look again.

“The mature person lives comfortably with ambiguity.” — Richard Rohr

Few people go looking for ambiguity, yet life delivers it anyway. Facts rarely present themselves with tidy edges. Motives blur. Stories diverge. Even good intentions can misfire. Very little arrives the way our more confident voices insist it should.

Discernment grows in this uneven terrain. It doesn’t erase uncertainty; it steadies a person inside it. One can hold the tension between what is hoped for and what the evidence allows without collapsing into cynicism or denial.

Integrity keeps that space honest. It prevents the subtle distortions — the convenient omission, the selective memory, the quiet self-deception — that erode clarity from within. Discernment reveals; integrity steadies.

Nothing about this is retreat. Discernment is active attention. Integrity is active alignment. Together they form a clarity that doesn’t depend on perfect conditions. They allow a person to move through complexity without being overwhelmed by it.

And that is where the work stretches beyond the private sphere. Discernment has personal consequences, but it also has public ones. A healthier culture will come from citizens who are willing to examine what they believe and why — and who teach that habit by example.