If a child grows up to be kind, healthy, responsible, self-sufficient, and decent—but not wealthy—has the sacrifice failed? Most people would instinctively say no. Yet many families behave as though the answer is yes. Not openly, of course. No parent sits their child down and says, "I didn't raise you to be happy. I raised you to be rich." But expectations have a way of revealing themselves. In comparisons with more successful relatives. In questions about promotions, land, and home ownership. In the disappointment that hangs in the air when a child is doing well enough to survive but not well enough to transform the family's fortunes. And perhaps nowhere is this tension more visible than in Kenya, where sacrifice is often treated as the highest form of love. Parents sacrifice for their children. Older siblings sacrifice for younger siblings. Entire generations sacrifice in the hope that the next one will live better. But what happens when sacrifice quietly becomes an...
Everyone says they want the truth — until it disagrees with them. Then suddenly it’s fake news, bad energy, or “a hater.” We love truth the way we love kale smoothies: in theory. It looks noble from a distance, but up close, it tastes like discomfort.
The truth is elusive because it knows where to hide. It’s been studying us for centuries. It knows we get defensive, that we protect our pride like property, that we prefer a comforting lie to an inconvenient fact. So it hides in plain sight — right behind the thing we don’t want to hear.
We live in an age where opinions travel faster than facts, where outrage is a national hobby, and where every WhatsApp group has at least one self-declared expert. The internet was supposed to make us wiser, but it just made our arguments louder. You can Google anything now — except humility.
Truth has learned to adapt. It used to live in libraries and classrooms, but now it’s forced to rent space between conspiracy theories and motivational reels. It’s not extinct, just tired. It’s sitting in the corner, sipping tea, watching us repost quotes we don’t live by.
It’s not enough to want the truth; you have to deserve it. You have to want reality more than validation. You have to be ready to be wrong — publicly, painfully, repeatedly. And that’s a tall order in a culture that treats certainty as confidence and doubt as weakness.
We’ve made truth a costume. Politicians wear it during campaigns, influencers wear it when selling skincare, and the rest of us wear it when we want to look “deep” online. Everyone performs honesty — few practice it. Because truth doesn’t trend. It doesn’t flatter. It doesn’t fit neatly in 280 characters.
Sometimes the truth hides in boredom — in data, in nuance, in the parts of the story no one forwards. It hides in the second source you didn’t bother to check. It hides in the friend you dismissed because they weren’t dramatic enough. It hides in the mirror when you’re brave enough to look past your justifications.
We treat truth like a missing child, but most days, it’s the adult in the room we keep talking over. It doesn’t scream. It just waits for us to stop performing long enough to listen. But listening is a lost art. We don’t want to understand; we want to react.
And that’s the trick: the truth isn’t hiding from us — it’s hiding because of us. Because we flood every space with noise, with ego, with the need to be right. Truth doesn’t argue. It steps back, folds its arms, and waits for silence.
Every now and then, it shows up unexpectedly — in a quiet conversation, in a hard question, in a child’s unfiltered comment that cuts through all our adult sophistication. It shows up when you realize the person you called “biased” might just be informed. It shows up when you catch yourself defending a lie you’ve outgrown.
It’s not enough to want the truth. Wanting it is easy — it makes you feel moral. But finding it? That’s messy work. It requires humility, curiosity, and the courage to say I don’t know. Truth doesn’t mind being questioned. What it won’t tolerate is laziness.
So yes, the truth is elusive. But not because it’s shy — because it’s selective. It reveals itself to the ones who can sit with complexity, who don’t need the world to always agree with them. It hides from the noisy, the certain, the impatient.
Maybe that’s why the world feels so confusing lately — not because truth has vanished, but because it got tired of competing for attention. It’s still here, quietly waiting, in books no one reads, in stories no one believes, in the pause before you type your next opinion.
The truth knows where to hide. The real question is — do we know where to look?
Comments
Post a Comment