On Comfortable Lies and the Pain of Knowing

Truth Costs More Than Most People Are Willing to Pay

Photo by Dawid Tkocz on Unsplash

This is, after all, a philosophy blog.

There is a particular species of loneliness that arrives not from being alone but from being awake. You sit at dinner with people you love—their faces familiar as your own reflection, their laughter the soundtrack of your life—and you feel the distance open like a chasm beneath the table. Not because they’ve changed, but because you can see now. And what you see is that they’ve chosen not to.

The pattern is right there. You can trace its edges with your finger, map its shape in the air between you. You’ve shown them—carefully, lovingly, with all the gentleness you can muster. And in their eyes, for just a moment, you see the flicker of recognition. They see it too. The shape becomes visible.

Then they look away.

Not because they don’t understand. That would be easier, somehow. They look away because understanding would cost them something they’re not willing to pay. It would require them to act, to choose, to stand in a place less comfortable than the one they’ve made for themselves. It would require them to know what they know, and to let that knowing change them.

So they choose the comfortable lie. And you—cursed with clear sight, blessed with clear sight, the same thing in the end—you get to watch them make that choice. Again. And again.