On Truth

A couple weeks ago I traveled to White Plains, New York for a networking and training event for the software I support in my day job. While at the event, I was able to spend some in person time with a colleague with whom I primarly interact via phone and work chat app. During a break, I told him a story from my personal life; upon its conclusion, he said to me, “You know, Erin, not everyone notices everything you do. I wouldn’t call attention to things like this - it can make you appear neurotic.”

Without missing a beat, I responded “But, I am neurotic,” which prompted surprised laughter from him. I continued, “Last year, I searched every crevice of myself. I see it all; I find no value in hiding.”

I spoke more about this journey in a previous post and why I have emerged feeling the most peaceful and powerful I ever have.

Courage is something that comes naturally to me in a lot of areas - I’m sure I’ve taken years off my parents’s lives with the cheerful abandon I have when it comes to physical feats, travel adventures, questionable apartments in emerging neighborhoods, and engaging interesting strangers in deep comversations; but it took decades to summon the courage to begin this honest self-examination.

A book that was incredibly helpful to me was Neil Strauss’s The Truth. This “searingly honest and compulsively readable” book is not for the prudish (for example: you will read several explicit recounts of sexual forays). However, under the titillating (mis)adventures, the deep self-reflection he did while on a quest to understand love and relationships prompted me to take up a similar one. Here is a man who is willing to put it all out there for the world to read; surely, I could do the same, for myself.

What’s an area of your life that you avoid shining a light upon? What are you trying to keep in the shadowy recesses? Can you practice courage and, even momentarily, illuminate them?