On Risk and Honesty

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When is the last time you took a risk? How did it work out?

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The last time I took a risk was a couple of days ago, when I wrote in my blog about a time I should have said no.

Writing about it felt risky. Not dramatically risky. But still, it was a risk because honesty always exposes something. It lets people see not only what we believe now, but where we failed to live by those beliefs then.

I do not know whether the post “worked out.” But I think it was better to write it honestly than to write something more comfortable. There is a health in telling the truth, even when the truth does not flatter us. Especially then.

And so, a reflection:

I tell myself
I could have chosen
something harmless.

A smaller story.
A safer one.
Something with a little embarrassment in it,
but not too much

There are plenty of those.

Stories that confess
without exposing.
Stories that blush a little
but keep their coat on.
Stories that say,
yes, I have made mistakes,
while carefully declining
to name the one
that still wakes up in the night
and walks the hallway.

But the real risks
are often quieter.

Not leaping,
not leaving,
not standing on a ledge.

Sometimes the risk
is telling the truth
about who you were
when you should have spoken
and did not.

Sometimes the risk
is letting go
of the polished version of yourself
and allowing the unfinished one
to be seen.

Because honesty
is a kind of surrender.
A refusal to keep arranging the light
so it falls only
on your better side.

A curated life
may look neater,
but it becomes harder to inhabit.

So I am learning
to choose the story
that does not flatter me.
To say:
this is what happened.
this is where I failed.

Because if I am to live honestly,
honesty cannot visit
only now and then.

It must follow me around.