Liars, Honesty & How You Got Lonely

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I didn’t always lie to those around me. Which, oddly enough, is a trait shared by millions of people. I’m not saying that people are liars, but what I can confirm is that many have a desire to be unblemished, on point, a role model, the top performer, the golden child, and so on. While I can sympathize with the desire to be these things, is it coming at the cost of lying to those around us and, most importantly, to ourselves?

Honestly, I think it has. I understand that people want to project the best version of themselves in relationships, work, and family, but this often comes at the cost of two great things: the depth of relationships and the right relationships. A life lived where you hide your faults and failures so that people love the idea of you, instead of the real you, is intrinsically shallow. No matter how much people are impressed, over the moon, or altogether wowed by what they think you are, there will always be a deep difference between being accepted for who you pretend to be and who you really are.

Let’s presume you’ve lived a life up to this point where you’ve been so focused on putting your best foot forward that you’ve embellished and hidden your failures. What kind of issues can that cause? I’d say you’ve likely experienced the feeling of walking away from a room full of people while feeling deeply lonely. When you take that route in life, you’re 'liked' but never truly accepted, and as that happens, the gap between how you’re treated and how you feel grows wider. Does that matter? Well, you tell me how it feels to be alone in a crowded room. It’s a lonely life when we put on a facade for others. Beyond that, we can only keep up the story for so long before the cracks start to show, and the people who stayed for the wrong reasons become a little less impressed with the details of your ruse.

Let’s take a longer look at the other side—gut honesty. I love gut honesty, most of the time. I will admit, there are moments in my own life when it’s incredibly hard to look someone in the eye and be completely honest, especially when I’ve let them down. But I’ve never seen better outcomes in life than when I’ve chosen to do just that.

When I was twenty-four, freshly out of a drug addiction and a month into treatment, I took the time to call every person I’d ever hurt and ask for their forgiveness. I realized that my decisions didn’t just affect me; they deeply hurt the people around me. This led to a humbling period in my life, where every ruse and story I had told was stripped away from my relationships. I tore down the lies, cover-ups, false promises, failures, and everything else that had built up between me and those around me.

This won’t be easy if you’ve held a lot back. But if I can offer some encouragement, an unexpected outcome of this decision was a newfound confidence—a confidence I’d never experienced before. It came from being completely true, inside and out, without worrying about who could see which parts of me. This honesty liberated me from the burden of others' perceptions, which, if I’m being honest, is plaguing people lately. They care so deeply about what others think of them that it comes at the cost of genuine connection.

In life, you’ll face a daily choice to reveal the parts of yourself that you’re not proud of, and when you do, you will run the risk of being turned away, yelled at, looked down upon, or any of the other negative reactions people have. However, the people who stay despite your failures will add far more value to your life than those who stayed because you never let them see who you really were.