It’s All A Lie

It’s All A Lie

On optimism, performance, and the discomfort of authenticity

For years, I’ve tiptoed the fine line between optimism and silence, and for some reason, people leaned more toward the silence.

Why is that?

Silence, for some, represents the unknown: the mystery, the wonder that causes us to misinterpret actions and feelings. It creates space for assumption, for projection, for people to decide what something means without ever engaging with what it actually is.

What I’ve learned is that most people don’t care about optimism or joy. They care about the process, especially the process that happens when they aren’t there, when they are not centered within it.

So they critique, they question, they analyze, they measure other people’s emotions and expressions as if they are one size fits all, as if emotion is something that should be uniform and agreed upon.

And in doing that, they miss what’s right in front of them.

They miss that sometimes, the joy in the room is not random, it’s offering.

I used to wonder why people focused more on the why nots instead of recognizing the present why. Over time, it became clearer: people are drawn to what feels familiar, even if that familiarity is rooted in heaviness.

Grief is understood, struggle is legible, weight has structure.

But joy, especially in heavy spaces, feels disruptive. It feels suspicious. It feels like something that needs to be explained.

And sometimes, what people reject isn’t the emotion itself, but the fact that they don’t know how to access it.

Or worse, they can’t perform it.

We’ve grown so accustomed to performance that we struggle to recognize what doesn’t ask to be seen. We’ve mistaken expression for authenticity, volume for depth, and visibility for truth.

So when something enters a space without trying to prove itself, without explaining, without mirroring the expected tone, it creates tension. Not because it isn’t real, but because it doesn’t follow the script.

I remember walking into an unknown space with one intention: connection.

What I found was a space filled with people searching, some were searching for recognition, some were searching for connection, some were looking to be seen, some were looking to be discovered, some were looking to be heard, and some were hiding their true intentions.

The air felt heavy, oppressive, almost unbearable, and the only thing I knew to do was maintain my optimism.

But my optimism was questioned, it was interpreted as naivety, as a lack of knowledge, as if awareness and joy cannot exist in the same body at the same time. As if understanding must always look like weight.

In those moments, I learned that being present doesn’t require performance, it doesn’t require constant conversation to prove that you understand. Sometimes, it requires embodiment.

Because the truth is, many of us want to be included so deeply that we begin to shape ourselves around what is most accepted. We learn which emotions are rewarded, which tones are validated, which expressions signal belonging.

And we adjust.

Not always consciously, but consistently.

We lean into personas, into emotions, into versions of ourselves that align with the room, even when they don’t align with us. And over time, that performance becomes so familiar that we lose the ability to distinguish it from what is real.

So when something, or someone, shows up without that performance, it becomes difficult to interpret.

In moments where difference is felt, there is always more happening beneath the surface than what is being acknowledged.

This is where silence shifts.

It is no longer just quiet, it becomes presence, and in a space filled with chaos and uncertainty, that presence can feel louder than anything being said. Because the voice is an instrument: everything that comes from it carries a frequency. And sometimes, silence is where that frequency is discovered.

The body carries what has not been expressed, it holds the weight of untold stories, of tension, of emotion that has not been given language.

And within that silence, something else exists too, something often overlooked.

Optimism.

Not as denial, but as coexistence. Not as avoidance, but as awareness that has not collapsed under pressure.

There are no more sanctuaries, at least not the ones we’ve learned about in history. But maybe that’s because we’ve been taught to recognize sanctuaries as places: quiet, distant, removed.

So when they show up as people, as presence, as something embodied instead of performed, we don’t recognize them. We question them, we misread them, we dismiss them.

Especially when they don’t reflect the emotional tone we’ve agreed is appropriate.

Maybe optimism isn’t the absence of depth, but a response to it.

Maybe it isn’t avoidance or lack of awareness.

Maybe it’s a choice.

A choice to remain present without becoming consumed, a choice to bring something back into spaces that have grown comfortable with heaviness.

I am not the silence people expect.

And I am not the performance they understand.

I am the presence that doesn’t need to prove itself to be real.

And maybe that’s what’s been unsettling all along.