Truth Be Told

There was a fierceness about him that scared people.

From an early age, he’d had no problem looking just about anyone right in the eye and telling them exactly what he saw about their choices and their results and their lives.

Being honest and direct were as intrinsic to him as his piercing green eyes.

As he grew older, he tried to turn the volume down on it, to be a nicer, more gentle version of himself.

But he could never really find a way to turn the volume down on one thing, without turning it down on everything.

He just came across as apathetic and disinterested.

He wasn’t wired to be nice.

He was wired to be a catalyst for change,
To open people’s eyes to what they needed to see,
To tell the truth no matter what.

That came at a high price…

Loneliness.
Isolation.
Alienation.

Playing nice cost more.

It cost him his voice.
It cost him his power.
It cost him his self.

Which is why he couldn’t keep up the charade for longer than a few months at a time.

Eventually, no matter how good things looked on the outside, who he felt called to be on the inside would win out and cause him to turn tail and retreat back into his shell.

To everyone else, it looked like resistance, self-sabotage, a lack of self-control.

Sometimes, it felt that way too.

He didn’t understand that the problem wasn’t in his reaction to trying to be someone he wasn’t; it was in his choice to do so in the first place.

When he finally saw that, he saw everything.

He saw that the only way he was ever going to make the difference he was meant to make, was by being the person he was meant to be, no matter how many people he rubbed the wrong way.

“Sometimes people need to be rubbed the wrong way”, he said. “In order to get moving in a better way.”