‘"LIVE PURE, SPEAK TRUE, RIGHT WRONG AND FOLLOW THE KING"

That is the slogan of Wesley Girls High School. The first time I heard it, I thought it was so beautiful. At the time of course, I wasn’t quite as philosophical and wordy but it still struck me as something more than just a proclamation. When I think about it, honestly this motto can challenge every human being. I can imagine that though many Wesley Girls students belted this slogan proudly on many occasions, they became aware of how difficult it is to actually live it out.

Interestingly, they are not alone in this realization. Anyone who has tried to live a truthful, pure life with the aim of righting wrongs may have noticed that it is no easy achievement. I try to but I fail woefully many times. When we live life the way we do, filled with secrets, we often lose so much trying to preserve and protect those secrets. Sometimes the intentions for keeping secrets are good but secrecy brings with it an empty cold darkness that casts a shadow on the part of our souls that begs to be lucid. We all crave some transparency, a privilege to stop pretending and evading so that we can finally be “ourselves” without fear of rejection.

Some of us don’t even know what our so-called “self “is. All we know is this appropriate dance we have been taught to perform in front of everyone - the dance that presents the best imitations of ourselves. We are constantly putting up a show subconsciously through no fault of ours. We become experts at performing this dance so well that we do it effortlessly. I ask myself, Why can’t I tell a person’s flaws within a few minutes of meeting them? The answer is because we are experts at hiding our flaws. The dance dictates that you never show yourself vulnerable or weak and to always hide your flaws.

Constantly we are afraid, so that even when we are trying to speak true and live pure instead of focusing on the truth we are worried about how the truth sounds. We are hooked on impressions and putting our best foot forward so that if our real “self” is vulnerable it is never shared. We are paralyzed by fear; a fear of not fitting in, a few of rejection and of not being popular. Fear becomes the safe haven from which we act or don’t act. When fear is present we find so many reasons not to act for we dare not go against the grain God forbid that we have an opinion or a persuasion that differs from the masses.

So how can we speak true and live pure when our truth and purity are precast molds? How can we live our truth when what we want to know to be true isn’t exactly the song and dance we have learned to do all this while and how can we be ourselves when Fear dictates our daily decisions passions and persuasions.

I was reading someone’s profile online the other day and something he had written grabbed my attention. In the section about himself, he had written “I love inconsistencies but I hate hypocrisy” My knee jerk reaction to this was “Oh perhaps this person is just someone who likes to play with words and sound smart and that he was just pontificating nothingness in hopes that people will make something out of it” However, the more I think about it, the more meaningful the statement is and the more it speaks to what he stands for and his truth. My take on his truth is that he sees that humanity is filled with inconsistencies and that there is a need for people to recognize this and stop being hypocrites.


Whenever, I see people striving to be authentic it humbles me, because all around me, I see perfect people. Achievers, people going places. People who I am sure aren’t perfect but because of the dance we are taught to perform in life give off this false sense of perfection. Early on in life, we are taught to talk, taught to present ourselves in the best light possible, taught to put our best foot forward and never to organically find ourselves. We don’t know who we are. We have a name and we have characteristics but that’s about it. So much fear, confusion and loads of identity issues. No wonder people get married and find out 5 years into the marriage they were nowhere near compatible. If we were truly ourselves and not following a set of rules, it wouldn’t take 5 years to unearth clear differences.

We are too busy putting our best foot forward, too busy auditioning people and interviewing people, too busy being the best imitations of ourselves when we could just be ourselves. I am not advocating anything radical, neither am I pontificating that anyone live a life cut off from the influences of the world like an island, something no one can really do. What I am saying is that there is something in you that resonates with only you and until that voice is allowed to speak, until that bit of you is let loose you may be the best imitation of yourself but never yourself.

Sometimes we fail to set ourselves free because we are afraid of being different, afraid of rejection afraid of the storms of judgment. Perhaps what we really fear isn’t so much the rejection that comes with trying to be ourselves but rather that our fears are invalid and that rather than being rejected we will actually be loved admired and accepted for daring to be ourselves.