An Honest Living

Part 1

Telling beautiful stories requires honesty. Honesty doesn’t always equate to truth, but fiction and nonfiction can both be beautifully written.

The stories we tell ourselves all contain an element of untruth. We know we will die someday, but we live most days as if we’ll live forever. We tell ourselves that the pain of childbirth and love is worth going through - or not. We are constantly telling ourselves that “next week will be less busy”, and I’ll have time for “that” when we really just don’t want to do '“that”. Our lives are all shepherded by some element of faith that shelters us from some naked truth that is just too raw to face.

Many stories we embellish with sweetness. We have to live with our choices, so we dress them up in some grand narrative. The terrible choices are smoothed and shaped into something that has poignant meaning. We dig deep for sweet gems in the bitter bulk of our memories. If we don’t, we know that the bitterness will swallow us.

Sometimes, we keep ourselves in line with intentionally bitter stories. These might arise around decisions that go against our better judgments. We have no rationale, so we create a narrative that boxes us into the choice we want to make. We swallow the bitterness before it swallows us.

Our narratives can be easy to erase, but there are cases for living with the unadulterated consequences of our choices. People without tattoos can’t help but ask how I could commit to so many. They’re always afraid they’ll change their minds and be stuck with something on their body forever. There’s no going back to a time when my faith in God was solid enough to ink a thick black cross on the back of my leg, but now I’m reminded of my hubris in thinking that I could tattoo the answers on my body. I could erase it, but instead, I wear a consequence of our never-ending thirst for certainty.

It takes courage to work with honesty. Whether you are seeking to understand yourself or polishing a consummate fairytale, being honest about the life you live makes for a beautiful story.

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“If you trade passion for stability, you basically trade one fiction for another. Both are products of our imagination.”
― Esther Perel