Introduction
Emotion and truth

Adolescence can be a journey through hell when we feel completely misunderstood.

'First love' only seems joyful in nostalgia. We are tormented not only by the spectre of rejection, but also by the creeping hopelessness that we will never be able to express what we feel. The emotions are turbulent, the stakes seem impossibly high, and: 'Nobody understands what I am going through.'

The time-honoured lament sounds original only to those who say it:

'They say it was just the same for them but it's different for me; it's much, much, better, and it's much, much, worse. Words suffocate me because I just hear myself spouting the same tired old clichés other people use.'

Adolescents discover that the more they want to tell the truth, the more their words lie. They can feel doomed to generalisation, an abyss where their unique voice will echo unheard. When they accept this they will accept that they must act. They must get on with the humble process of performing, because acting is all we can do. Acting is the nearest we get to the truth.

There is always a gap between what we feel and our ability to express what we feel. The more we wish for the gap to be smaller, and the more we want to tell 'the truth', then the wider this perverse gap yawns. No three words are as inadequate as 'I love you'. We act constantly, not because we are purposely lying, but because we have no choice. Living well means acting well. Every moment in our lives is a tiny theatrical performance. Even our most intimate moments have a public of at least one: ourselves. I can never be truly alone if the other 'I' can see what I am doing. I can never purely 'be'.

We do not know who we are. But we know that we can act. We know that there is a greater or lesser quality to our performances as student, teacher, friend, daughter, father or lover. We are the people we act, but we have to act them well, and with a deepening sense of whether our performances are 'truthful' or not. But truthful to what? The real me inside? To others? Truthful to what I feel, want, ought to be? The question marks hang with the observation that the above and all the following are not necessarily true, but may prove useful.