Live Your Truth

Live your truth*. Do you know what your truth is? I thought I did for years. Many years. And one day I realized I didn’t. 

Awhile back, a friend I’ve known for many years listened patiently as I related a series of events unfolding in my life, bringing me to a decision: “Do what’s safe or do what’s right.” Neither choice is easy for different reasons, but his comment, “Integrity is doing what’s right whether it benefits you or not,” resonated more than any other.  

I expected my life to quiet down after my decision, but instead everything became louder, sharper somehow. Harder. It was as if once I admitted the disconnect between what I was living and who I really was, my life responded in violent vibration, trying to create a seismic shift in my world.  I slowly realized—accepted perhaps—that I was now on a path that was wholly different from that which I’d traveled most of my adult life. When your priorities shift, your life must as well.

It is amazing that we live our lives hour by hour, days into years, burying the truth we each carry within us under the frenetic busy-ness of our lives. We think we are on “the right path” following our truth, only to wake up years—sometimes decades—later and realize we have not lived our own truth at all. Instead, we have blindly followed a path that was so well worn we mistook someone else’s truth for our own.

But I’ve learned if we commit to the pursuit, we can find a way to escape the chatter of our chaotic lives and create a space for our truth to seep in. This is the hoped-for reckoning, the easy awakening we envision happening while we stare into the fireplace alone, late at night, glass of wine in hand. Many of us find instead that life circumstances-- unexpected and unwanted--force the confrontation, shaking us awake, face to face with a new clarity in which we question everything about the current path we find our feet upon.

Are we living our truth? How do we even know if we have uncovered our truth in the first place? If we are asking these questions, we already know the answer deep in our soul. Instead of a truth which is uniquely, beautifully our own, we are living the truth of our family, the truth we’ve been taught to believe is the “right” or “responsible” thing to do, or the truth that has allowed us—until now--to outrun a fear we harbor deep inside.

 Maybe it is the fear that we are not enough so we were busy finding ways to show off what we thought others would judge as important. Maybe it was the fear of never having enough, so we moved from job to job, promotion to promotion, eyes forever on the next salary hike, stuffing down the boredom of an unfulfilling job or the stress of a fear-driven workplace. Maybe it was the fear that glimpses of our dream only showed us how far we had to go, and we felt helpless to close the gap. And so we put our heads down, speeding forward on well-worn tracks laid down and approved by those whose truths we exchanged for our own.

Yet every now and then, it calls: a longing, a knowing, a pull for something else.  What it is we may not even be sure.  But in that moment we pause, knowing our truth is there, speaking to us, asking to be uncovered, calling to be released.

When you next hear this, commit to listen. Know that unearthing your truth will likely require deep reflection. It may also reveal the need for upheaval in your life in order to sort through and reorganize your life components in a way that makes sense, that feels right at a deep level…that forces you to realize that living with the acceptable, the expected, or the familiar has not separated you from your truth, merely hidden it from you. The solace for your soul is recognizing if you have come this far, you are well into the journey, and your truth will rise to meet you if you are in earnest search.

Both hands on heart, deep breaths. Invite calm, invite clarity, invite guidance. Do this daily. Do it more than daily. Do it religiously. Then expect answers. Listen to the nudges you get, the unexpected wisdom that crosses your path by way of conversation snippets, a book recommendation, a meeting with someone who can open a door you never knew existed, an opportunity for a change you never contemplated. If you invite your truth into your life, it will come.  It may not be easy to follow it or to live it, at least not at first, but I believe it offers the only path worth following in life.

I hope, my friend, I will see you as a fellow traveler along this route. I may not yet know where my version of truth will lead me. But I know what my truth is. And that I’m no longer willing to accept anyone else’s version of what my path should look like, nor be deterred by obstacles encountered—or placed--in my way as I choose to follow mine instead.  I wish the same for you.

*Live Your Truth is the title of a soul-stirring book by Kamal Ravikant. If my words resonate with you, you are a seeker on the path; I recommend this book as a companion on your journey. (This is not an affiliate link; I simply love the book.)