The most expensive thing you can buy
The most expensive thing you can buy is not a thing.
And the most expensive thing it costs you is not money.
While you cannot obtain it or touch it, you can hear, feel and watch it affect everything you look at.
The most expensive thing you can buy?
A lie.
This morning, the moon was still in the sky when I got up. The sun was just waking up. Beginning to stretch its arms in a yawn. The birds were enthused, song infused with unabashed longing.
Six years ago this would have felt like a death sentence. It would have signaled another night that never ended - seeping into the next day instead. It would have signaled that I’d borrowed tomorrow’s energy and joy again, for a fleeting glimpse of it the night before. It would have signaled that once again, I’d offered my wellness for something that was supposed to resemble happiness.
The lie I was sold was that to have a good time there needed to be alcohol. Loud noises. Cheap music. Shallow connections. Forgettable conversations. That the point was to forget. To leave stress behind for a while. To indulge in a vacation for the mind, where hedonistic pleasures were the reward to suffering a life we’d seemingly chosen, in order to fit in, and belong.
The lie I was sold was that this was glamorous. That celebration meant clinking of glasses and passing around substances and sharing half-truths we’d regret saying out loud in the morning.
The lie I was sold, I bought willingly. Because it was warm, and pleasurable. Because I could feel it. The best good. The worst bad. It tore me apart and left me for dead. But I’d sew myself back up and do it all again. Because the lie was, “What else is there? What’s better than this? If there was anything better you would have found it by now.”
Lies are the most expensive thing we can buy because it costs time. Energy. Life. Because a lie cannot exist without those things to keep it going. The lies we say to others, the lies we say to ourselves. Lies require more lies. To cover up, to keep alive.
And if everyone else around you believes it, you would be the crazy one to say, “This isn’t it. This isn’t how I want to live. This isn’t what makes me happy.”
The job, the house, the car. The things, the excess, the comforts. The pills, the weed, the booze. Luxury at its finest is a fallacy whispered in suggestion. Provocation, seduction, and false promises.
The lie I was sold was that freedom meant doing whatever the hell I wanted. But true freedom is not recklessness. I have the freedom to drink until dawn if I want. I also have the freedom to sleep as the sun sets, and wake as it rises, in time to bid the moon farewell. I have the freedom to spend my time in a mind-altering substance that takes me away if I want. I also have the freedom to spend my time in a mind-restoring practice, returning time and energy back to myself. I have the freedom to create chaos in my world if I want. I also have the freedom to create stillness, and to let that stillness reverberate as peace in my life, lending a ripple effect to everyone that transits in, out and around it as I do so.
Life is a privilege. It is a right. It is a responsibility.
True freedom is when we learn to use our privilege, our right, and our responsibility to create a better world for ourselves and those around us. When we choose to live in the reality of our creation.
I had a client write to me the other day, “your words are spoken with such softness…ironically at the same time they carry so much weight…I guess you can say you speak as if your words are a ton of feathers…”
Yes, the truth can hit like a ton of feathers - which would hurt if they were bound tight. But, if allowed to be unraveled, they can land softly, gently - casting everything in a new light.
What truth are you scared of hearing?
What truth are you scared of saying out loud?
What is it costing you?
As always, with so much love,
Vera
