By Grace Acosta

“An Inconvenient Truth,” the movie about Al Gore’s PowerPoint presentation on global warming, is getting both favorable reviews and a fair amount of publicity despite the fact that it is (a) a documentary and (b) about a dismal topic. That has to be a good omen for something, though I am not sure exactly what.

Even the movie’s title impresses me because it isn’t as upbeat as American audiences would normally stomach. Granted, I’m the type who would run out to see a film titled “A Blinding Truth That Pierces, Then Shatters the Phony, Flimsy Veneer You Used to Call Security,” but most people, I believe, would not be so inclined. I think it’s great that the Gore film doesn’t attempt to hide its theme underneath a manipulatively patriotic moniker or some otherwise misleading oversimplification and/or amplification, like “Freedom Fries,” or “Death Tax.”

In our current don’t-tell me-what-I-don’t-want-to-hear social and political climate, it honestly would not have surprised me that to market a film on global warming, you would have to call it something like “Sunlight for the Children” so as not to scare audiences away.

But the movie’s title is spot-on. Truth is inconvenient, uncomfortable, certainly even hurtful, but truth’s heart is not pain. Truth’s heart is power: power to inspire, power to transform, power to empower.

Truth is precise like a laser, and clear like Hemingway prose, but it isn’t often that we can identify what truth really is, because much of the time we swim in the murky waters of our own mental and emotional constructs.

We hesitate to openly speak the truth because we don’t want to risk others’ dislike or, God forbid, their disapproval. We don’t listen to important truths about ourselves because we would rather be right than wise, thus we wind up pointing fingers of blame in every direction but toward ourselves. What we preach in front of others is not the same as what we gossip about behind their backs, or we voice opinions that reflect cowardice and self-preservation rather than what we know, in the deepest part of ourselves, to be true.

Or maybe not. Again, truth is difficult to ascertain, and as human beings, we are masters of resolutely believing in just about anything if it makes us feel safe, important, or better than the other guy. The truth is that truth can be risky - but not harmful, at least in the long-term - and it is often hidden.

I think of myself as a seeker of truth, hunting and prowling for it like some people haunt garage sales and bargain bins because they know there is something of value, some jewel of a find, camouflaged under loads of worn-out and useless paraphernalia. I also like to think that there are others like me, maybe even among the recently graduated class of 2006, who have the patience and stamina to look for truth in deep pockets of unexplored terrain. Because at the end of the day, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, more valuable and wondrous than the truth, except, perhaps, love. As Marcus Aurelius wrote, “I seek the truth… It is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance that does harm.”

Now, ain’t that the truth!