The cruellest lies aren’t the ones that other people tell us – it’s the ones we tell ourselves. They are the ones we desperately cling to, the ones we protect against any truth, and they are the ones that will destroy us in the end.
Perhaps the most fatal lie we keep telling ourselves is the one that we have time. That there will be a time – some day in some distant future – when we will have the time to do all the things we always wanted to do, say everything we ever wanted to say and be, whoever we think we might actually be. But that leaves the question: Why are we not doing this right now? What are we waiting for really?
Some people seem to be born with a plan for everything. They know exactly where they want to be in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years from now. They never question that plan, they never falter and they never look beyond that plan. Maybe that is why they succeed. They are driven by that plan, by that view, even it’s very similar to what everyone else is doing, but still – they move on that path without questioning it, without doubting it – and somehow it always seems to play out exactly like they wanted it. I am not like that, I never was, and though I sometimes wish I could be, I will never be like that.
I always felt like the people around me speak in a different language – I do understand the words, but they don’t mean anything to me. And the lie I keep telling myself? That one day, I will understand it. That I just need to hang in there a little longer and it will all make sense. Except it never does. The only thing it does do is making me a little more miserable every day. And I have no cure for that. I have no plan and I doubt that there is some magical cure lying around anywhere. There is just no way I will ever be able find a meaning in this lie.
But this leads to the next lie – the one where I do not know what to do. It’s not that I don’t know, just that I am terrified of it. Because all my life I heard of all the things that could go wrong if you step off the path of security. But security is just one more little lie we keep telling ourselves, it’s one more poison we keep drinking up until it slowly kills us.
The truth is, nothing is ever secure, nothing is ever certain – except that one day, hopefully a day far off in the future, you will die. And on that day, no lie will save you and you will regret everything you did not do, did not say and did not let yourself feel, a lot more than everything you failed at. This is not my wisdom of course, but that doesn’t matter in the end. Because even though I keep writing all of this, it still doesn’t stop the voice whispering: “But what if I fail? What if I just don’t have it in me? What if all I’ll ever be is a failure?”.
And the truth is, you’ll never know if you do not try.