Pants on Fire
The story you choose to tell.
“Sir please” I begged “I will never use it again or break any other school rule, just forgive me this one time.” I added.
“What’s in there?”
“Just pictures from the school trip” I said immediately.
“I will have a look and if that’s true I will give it back, else it will go to the principal”
“Can I come to your office tomorrow to get it back?” I asked. I got a nod in response.
Back in school we were all given thirty minutes each week to use the internet. Twelve-year-old me had just been caught in the lab when ninth graders were supposed to be using internet, not seventh graders. To add to that I had been caught with a USB drive which we were not allowed to have back in grade seven. To make things worse, I had lied, the USB drive did have pictures from the school trip, but it also had a couple of movies and Tor Browser (the thing that would potentially get me in trouble). The teacher was kind enough not to take me to the principal’s office, even though I had gone to his office the next day to ask for the USB drive and refused to believe that it had anything other than pictures.
Looking back I often wonder why I had lied, because there was no way I would have gotten away with it. The answer is quite simple, lying had me feel safer in the moment. Up until when I was about ten I would almost never lie, between the ages of ten to sixteen I had zero hesitance before lying, since about sixteen I have tried to embrace absolute honesty once again.
But recently I realized I was lying almost every day, not to others but to myself, the person with whom it is most important to be honest. The reason still the same, it made me feel safer in the moment. Looking around I realized that every lie told is for the same reason and most lies people tell are to themselves, furthermore modern self-help, social media and/or people around us often fuel these lies. ‘You are perfect,’ ‘You are a complete loser’ and ‘You are the absolute best’; these are a few phrases we get to hear, given are emotional state we choose what story we want to tell ourselves. You are not perfect or all good, there is plenty you need to work on and loads of people out there doing far better than you, believing that we are perfect is a delusion, one hard look in the mirror will show us plenty we need to work on. At the same time, you are not a loser, that narrative is birthed by insecurity and laziness because if I am a loser, I will not work because a loser is just who I am, it is a sub-conscious way of giving ourselves an out, to feel safer and more comfortable in the moment, rather than looking at the long term consequence of not working towards a better self. The objective reality is somewhere in the middle, there are certain things you are doing right and certain you need to work on.
Being honest with oneself is extremely hard, because though we have beautiful parts, we also have ugly ones, our intentions are not always as noble as we tell ourselves and the pillars that support are ego are made of delusional beliefs. All this is worth it in my opinion because in the long run being honest with ourselves will speed up our personal evolution by many folds.
Self-love is not building a fake image of yourself which you can like, it is embracing the parts of yourself which make you want to throw up, and working on those parts. But why be honest with yourself? Everybody you know at some point will leave you or you will leave them, either by choice, death or because of circumstances, but there are two people who will never leave you even if you try your best to get rid of them, God and you yourself. The former you cannot deceive, the latter is the easiest to deceive. Relationships are built when you get rid of veils of deceit which lead to vulnerability. When we are not comfortable being vulnerable with ourselves how can we expect others to accept us and how are we so sure we are not accepting others without an unconscious selfish motive.
Its time to have an unfiltered conversation with yourself, the more of these you have the simpler life will become.
-Sartha
P.S – The title was inspired by something I was often told as a kid, ‘Liar liar pants on fire.’
