Tag Archives: truth

The Risk of Honesty

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“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”  —Fyodor Dostoevsky

A culture of cancellations and filters and the constant traversing of eggshell-laden paths has made for a gun-shy society terrified to whisper a word. But born from the mumbles trapped behind duct-taped mouths are the keys and strategies to bridge divides, lower the gates, and meet in the middle.

The more we are silenced, the more we stay silent.

A consistently suppressed people will lose the desire, inclination, and (eventually) the ability to question the status quo, speak truth to power, or identify expanding cracks in the concrete of a widely accepted and often forgotten foundation.

All muscles eventually atrophy from lack of use.

Protecting people’s feelings is a vitally important endeavor. No one should shuffle down the sidewalk wearing the weight of a thousand slurs, nursing bruises felt from a ceaseless barrage of barbs. But with every drawn line, there is an opportuity to cross. An ounce of prevention has now become a ton. But the cure still weighs a pound.

Constructing and fortifying a personal fortress is just as valuable as confiscating everyone else’s arrows. Perhaps we should shift focus and teach brick stacking or force field raising. Find a way to never feel hurt and you won’t.

I’ve always subscribed to the personal inventory formula. The only thing we have pure control over is ourselves and the way we react to the actions of the masses. So shining the light inside will eventually let the glow escape. It just needs to work its way around a few resistant walls.

Stand on that stage. Sit at that keyboard. Look into that camera. Pick up that pen. Turn on that microphone.

Tell a truth that is yours and let the cards drop and sit wherever they scatter. The world is far too fragile for this much fragility.

Adolescence Interrupted

The Fixer

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I spend the majority of my time tucked behind computer screens, scrutinizing every comma, semicolon, and em dash, in an endless effort to peel back the layers of literary smokescreens in hopes of revealing an author’s genuine intent. After years of tapping squarely-lettered keys, I can resolutely stand behind one indisputable discovery. There is almost always more meaning in the mistakes.

It is my job to bend language by squeegeeing sentences to wipe away the dirty ambiguity born from a writer’s internal monologue. We are all guilty of celebrating the dizziness achieved from riding the carousel of private broken records. It’s not our fault. Revelations routinely sound sweeter when they’re produced between our own ears.

But consistently revising these misappropriated intentions makes me wonder how much real-world editing we do on a daily basis. How many conversations are buffered to limit impact? How often do we feign interest in the details of other people’s lives to pretend we still share a connection? What does truth look like…unabridged?

I am beyond lucky to live in this pretty plastic city, surrounded by a core group of friends who shun pretense and smoke-blowing so adamantly, we barely even notice the permeating artificiality waiting with disinterested fangs at every corner. We’ve miraculously been able to avoid the bite by floating above the nonsense and holding firmly to our East Coast roots while baking our skin in the California sun.

But on a macrocosmic level, the question remains. Are we editing ourselves so severely that even the notion of veracity will someday sit beside 1950s table manners in a dusty museum of relics?

Truth isn’t necessarily the most popular concept to hang a hat on these days, but its extinction will undoubtedly leave some craters no clever repartee can fill. We might be wise to lay the eraser down for a little while and speak from the heart. What’s the worst that could happen? Honesty?

Adolescence Interrupted