ON TELLING THE TRUTH (OR SURRENDER)
I was an awful liar as a child. By awful, I don’t mean prolific, I mean inept. If I lied, I would crack a smile, avoid eye contact, or turn red. And the deeper the lie got, the worse my symptoms became. Eventually, I gave up and decided that lying was not a skill fate had blessed me with, and instead, began to tell the truth all the time, even at a cost. I fessed up to everything. My mom got timely and honest information about any time I got drunk, high, snuck out, or cheated on a test. So if you asked me when I left for college whether or not I had a habit of lying, I would probably tell you no.
But that in itself was a lie.
As I grew up and moved through college, my lying days were alive and well, although I may not have known it. I lied habitually in dating relationships in an effort to make someone feel like I was low maintenance. I would lie about not being hurt by a certain comment from a friend so as not to seem soft. I would lie about being confident in my future and my abilities to avoid embarrassmentembarrassment. I lied about how I felt about God, and how I thought God felt about me. All along, however, I was sure I was being vulnerable, offering up honest information about my behavior to close friends under the impression that this was all that was needed to build intimacy.
That also, was a lie.
What I was experiencing and practicing is called informational vulnerability. While that is very helpful and worth practicing, it took me a long time (and the help of some good friends) to see that there is a difference between informational vulnerability and emotional vulnerability. Informational vulnerability is telling someone what you’ve done, the objective of a situation.
Emotional vulnerability is telling someone how that thing made you feel, the subjective of a situation. Informational vulnerability says something like: “I have an alcohol addiction.” Emotional vulnerability says something like: “I feel absolutely terrified of the voices in my head and what they would say if I stayed sober for long enough.” I think our culture has a much better grid and expectation of vulnerability about information, but not as much of a framework for being vulnerable about our emotions.
The thing about lying is that it does exactly what it promises to do: it shields us. A well-constructed and well-lived lie is a safeguard against someone seeing the seemingly dark and unpleasant sides of you, big and small. Lying keeps you safe because it keeps you isolated. Which means, yes, the truth is an open and exposed place to live. But it’s the only place you can know the warmth of another person.
That’s the truth.
If lying keeps us in isolation, the truth brings us out of hiding into being known. Telling the truth is one of the most tangible ways to surrender our souls to reality. Lying is a means of control born out of the belief that we are unsafe and must fabricate our own safety, where telling the truth is a means of surrender born out of the belief that we are safe and that the worst thing we can be is, not exposed, but alone.
So if you want reality, life, in its fullest, tell the truth. There will always be a temptation to construct our world through lies, deception, and fabrications. Or in other words: to hide. But we need to tell the truth because we need each other. I believe telling the truth is important for you – for your body and your soul – and I believe it is important for others to hear the truth.
“I feel scared about my financial future.”
“Here’s what I actually want.”
“I’m concerned for you.”
Telling the truth doesn’t just open us up to grace and light, it also opens others up to that same grace, and creates a place for other people to open up what’s hidden in them, too. It’s in this sharing, the listening and telling, that intimacy is built. Because as safe as it feels to hide, it also is impossible to be loved in such isolation.
The world needs the truth; we need you to tell the truth. Or at least, don’t hide. Trust the truth to be a worthwhile place to live. As Ethan Hawke writes in Rules for a Knight, “A knight does not protect the truth. He lives inside it, and the truth protects him.”
Tell the truth.