There’s no better version of you than in authenticity

There’s something incredibly seductive about authenticity, the knowledge that you live and exist in something or a place at its most truthful, most honest version of itself.

If there is one thing I am most lustful over, it is authenticity.

It is a thing whose advances I can never resist and hope to never resist.

To inhabit any space at its most truthful is to be as close to godliness as possible.

Ugliness is not attractive, but there is a specialness about knowing that someone has allowed you into a place they’d rather hide from the world.

And this is the true allure of it, to be able to see things for what they are, to take all of the ugly with the beauty; a place that pushes you to grow and exist past your shallow self.

It is for these reasons that I can never understand lies.

One Sunday, about two years ago, my friend Moya came back from church with a very powerful message from the sermon, that when we judge people for their actions towards us, we must always consider the intention as well as the act. We ought to be concentrating on the intention as that would help us navigate hurt better.

I have lived by that notion since then. It is that foundation that makes it difficult for me to accept lies.

A lie is an intentionally false statement. Your intention when you tell a lie is to be deceptive. People often say I lied to protect you but that need to lie to get out of confronting and dealing with situations that they have created is one of the most selfish things they can do. So lies not only make you a deceptive person, but a weak one too.

And lies can be so exhausting. To constantly have to remember the flawed version of events that you have created so you can continue to cover up your deceptions must be an exercise of note, especially when the lies aren’t always smart, making it easier for the next person to poke holes in them.

I would need to live in a perfect world for me to never get lied to. I understand that. So I have accepted that I will get lied to from time to time. And so there are lies I have come to expect, lies like I’m five minutes away when you are 50 minutes away. The lies I will not tolerate are those that feed into the need at times for humans to create bubbles of fantasy instead of dealing with what’s outside the bubbles.

I do not want to be cajoled into bubbles that I did not create because the thing about bubbles is they are prone to burst.

And once they do, there is absolutely no way we could ever return to a place before that. Once the bubble bursts nothing about a person is attractive to me anymore.

I can never forgive the betrayal of someone who has brought me bubbles where my offering has been authenticity.

I have found this to be the incredible, strong, terrifying but absolutely necessary action of choosing oneself.