A post-dinner chat turned into a very solid conversation. I don’t know how you managed to put away your iPad and have a break from your homework. I realise you are very busy being in your last year of high school with all your sport and musical activities!

But the conversation was for me an eye-opener, as I hope it was for you. 

As you may recall, the subject we were discussing was most intriguing and after so many years after the death or assassination of John Kennedy, who was President of the United States, it is rather strange that we are still discussing who did it. 

Much has been written and published and investigated, and as we concluded in our discussion, we are not much closer to finding who in fact did it. 

And there is the other big question: why did it happen?

It is not my intention to offer solutions or answers but what I discovered was your interest in history. At your age and in an age when current affairs, as presented on Channel X or Y, take over our life  and limit our interest  to ‘anything current ’, otherwise you will be judged and classified as ancient, it was even more fascinating to find a teenager interested in the past, even in  the recent past. 

I find it rather unfortunate that you know of so many gory details about that incident. You explained that in your history class you are doing an in-depth study of special events, to assist you to reach a decision about the why and the who?

And the whole episode turns out to be a Hitchcock whodunnit movie! Which is fair enough, as we are always so keen to find the truth of the matter. Not just about Kennedy’s assassination but also about the reason behind the election of Hitler or the emergence of Mao Zedong as leader of the Communist Party of China… In fact, you can well extend it to: why do things happen the way they do?

Not easy questions to answer.

Truth is like history, a very flexible entity. You can interpret it the way it fits your feelings, your politics or ideology

It does not require a yes/no answer or to select one from a multiple choice test.  Reality is more complicated than that.

No easy and straightforward answers.  Political assassinations are as old as Julius Caesar and beyond and since. And if you study the history of the times and get some assistance from Shakespeare’s play and Cicero’s Orations against Mark Anthony, you may get some glimpses of complicated answers.   

What you may surely arrive at is one thing: the complexity of life. That when all is said and done and when you get to know all these facts and figures is to reach the conclusion that life is a mystery.

Even to get to the bottom of one issue is virtually impossible. Historians are still arguing on the beginning of World War II, and the death of Socrates, and about so many past and recent events.

These ‘episodes’ in history keep many PhD students and a number of writers and researchers busy in their jobs. We the laypersons find it also fascinating to research causes and results and putting the  pieces of the jigsaw puzzles of life together.

It is fascinating. However, it is an unending story.

There is a general belief that truth will make you free.

I believe that the one who first said it was referring to some metaphysical or moral truth, not factual or worldly  truth. 

Truth is like history, a very flexible entity. You can interpret it the way it fits your feelings, your politics or ideology.  And in so doing it becomes ‘your’ truth and through your research and study and arguments you can strengthen the fact that “after careful study I cannot but conclude that…”

That’s your prerogative. However, do keep in mind that the other fellow on the other side of the table may hold a different opinion and she can justify her position as you can yours.

Such situations may lead to ‘confusion worse confounded’: it may lead you to explore and  discover, not just about issues  and events but also about individuals and how the universe is composed not on agreements only but many conflicts of ideas, of methods, plans,  ambitions,  ideologies, etc.  

The  German philosopher Kant  used to  look at the night sky and wonder. “Two things fill me with awe and wonder,” he wrote. “The more steadily we look upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”

If he lowered his vision to lower horizons  and concentrated on life and its complexities he would  have discovered more reason to stop and be amazed at the wonder and the mysteries of... what goes on… on earth!

This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece