week 19
“only the truth has legs.”
I finished reading Martha Beck’s The Way of Integrity and I want to immediately reread it.
Beck talks about following your inner truth, and her year of “not lying at all,” which cost her everything but paved the way to living her truest and most fulfilling life. Following and living the truth comes with many warnings and she is forthcoming about them all, and honest that the truth often comes at a high cost. But she emphatically says it’s worth it.
This week, my failure comes from all the little lies I told “great to see you” when I really meant the opposite, “I am excited to plan for next school year,” and all the times I said yes when I really meant no.
Beck also exposes how the untruths we know deeply are not true but we believe anyway are maybe the most dangerous lies we tell ourselves. This resonated with me so much, and made me recall how many conversations I’ve had with my best friend that went along the lines of “intellectually I know this isn’t true, but it really feels true and it’s hard not to act like it’s true.” I thought about some of these untruths that I have believed:
I am destined to be a teacher for life/ until retirement at a very old age
I will lose the respect of my family if I leave teaching
I will lose the love of my family if I leave teaching
My students won’t be okay if I leave teaching
I must have an incredible, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to justify leaving teaching
I will not be able to make money being creative
I can’t be my full self and be completely loved and accepted my my family
It’s hard for me to make friends
Nothing comes easily for me
Then one morning this week, in the first hazy moments of first waking up but not being alert, my biggest untruth that I believe hit me: that I cannot go after what I really want and get it.
I suppose this untruth was an underlying catalyst of the whole blog and website, a long-game attempt to disprove this untrue belief through intentionally doing the only thing I really feel like I can do: fail. It is also what I attribute as the biggest obstacle that has held me back from really “going for it” and from bouncing back from failure to become better. It is what has kept me from telling people what I actually want, because to me that is my biggest vulnerability with all the risk of exposure and embarrassment from admitting that I want something and then not getting it. It has kept me from claiming my agency in my own life, because in a way, it’s much easier to stay miserable and feel safe and hidden than in taking action again and again to do something new that might not pan out.
I may add to this post or keep writing about it, but for this week ahead my goal is to challenge this believed untruth as I keep working to eliminate the can’ts and have-to’s from my thoughts and communications. I have agency in my life, I can choose my actions, and while I don’t yet know how it’s all going to work out, I deeply know that I can go after what I want and make things happen.
To challenging our untruths that we believe!