Happy lies

Your truth matters

This quote arrived in my inbox and proceeded to smack me right between the eyes.

I’ve been a Martha Beck fan since she was on the Oprah show back in the 90s. Some people recorded their soap operas back then to watch after work; I recorded Martha. If this quote (which is from her book Finding Your Own North Star) hit you the way it hit me, I don’t need to explain why, but just in case: Martha speaks to me because she cuts right to the core without flinching, with insight that suddenly leaves the world a little clearer than it’s ever been before.

I wonder sometimes how long it takes before our tiny, infant selves are already overloaded with lies about who we are and who we have to be. Then I realize I’m glad I don’t know, because I suspect the answer would be thoroughly depressing. (We already know girls learn as early as age six that girls and women “aren’t brilliant,” and boys know by the same age not to show their emotions, because that’s “girly.” That’s distressing enough, thanks.)

I think these lies sit inside us and eat at us because part of us, the deepest, truest part, knows that they’re wrong. The rest of us may be in denial, but we can’t fool ourselves entirely. These lies fit us like shoes that are two sizes too small. You can fake it for a while, but there is no denying that those shoes do not fit. You are just dying to take them off—but if the reason you’ve told yourself to wear them is compelling enough, you’ll do anything to stick it out a little longer, no matter what happens to your feet as a result.

I think of lies like:

“Good vibes only!” (Way to deny the reality and range of human existence. Also known as spiritual bypass.)

“You should get a real, stable job.” (Just what is a stable job, exactly? Have we really not yet learned that stability is only an illusion?)

“Your writing/music/dancing/acting/photography/feelings etc. isn’t important.” (OUUUUUUUCH.)

Lies like these are destructive, but that last one is particularly deadly—and doesn’t have to be about a creative pursuit, though it often is. Happy lies can be about your feelings about your toxic workplace, or the relationship that doesn’t feel right to you, or any number of other things that feel true to you but are dismissed by others as unimportant, imaginary, or otherwise all in your head. For the sake of simplicity, I’m focusing on creativity, but the generalities of what I’m saying apply to these things, too.

There’s not a lot of distance between the notion that your creativity isn’t important and the idea that you are not important, but a lot of people never actually make that connection. They may be aware that something’s not right, but they can’t put it into words. Why? Because the idea that creativity is “optional”—that if you can’t make money off something easily, that thing is worthless—is so baked into our capitalist culture that it’s like the air. We can’t see it.

Wired to Create

The reality is that human beings are wired to create. Some of us are fortunate enough to want to create new cars or air conditioners, which fit neatly into the usual idea of productivity. More power to them! We need those folks. But we also need the people who write the movies and the songs and bring them to life for all of us not only to enjoy, but to learn from—because art reflects us back to ourselves and gives us perspectives we would never experience without it.

(Shout-out to the writers and actors on strike right now, especially in the face of sourpusses who think only “real” jobs are more important than art. They’re so, so wrong, about that and the idea that these aren’t “real” jobs.)

When it comes down to it, most of us strongly identify with the things we most love doing—and for most of us, that’s the creative pursuit that makes us feel most alive. That’s no surprise: all of us want to feel more alive. In that wild moment of spiritual clarity I had in 2020, it was abundantly obvious to me that we are never more alive than we are when we’re lit up with the spark that connects us to that vital creative life force that keeps the universe turning.

As uplifting as that image is, identifying with our creative outlets means that our identity and sense of worthiness can suffer when we’re told those outlets aren’t important. Our shoes are two sizes too small, leaving us cranky, depressed, and feeling very, very not alive.

Our society reinforces this idea all over the place, so it’s up to us to get to the truth, hold that truth sacred, and refuse to let anything or anyone take it away from us. That truth is linked to your sense of worth. You really want to hold it close.

Other people’s ideas and suggestions and, yes, even lies about how life is or should be will never, ever help us find that spark inside us. It doesn’t matter how “happy” those lies are. It doesn’t matter how much we might want to believe them. Our truth might be harder to deal with, because it doesn’t fit the status quo. It might mean conflict with the people around us—the folks we work with, the people we love—and that is never, ever fun.

But acknowledging that truth, even when it’s tough and we’d really rather not, is the only thing that will reconnect us with the spark that can take us from misery into our real, true joy.