One of my highlights of 2023¹ was an open air live concert by Cat Stevens / Yusuf at Stadtpark Hamburg. After the concert, my son and I played many of his songs for a couple of weeks, and one whose lyrics stuck with me was “In the end” where each verse starts with: “You can’t bargain with the truth”². Of course not, we’ll all say and nod, it’s the truth. But then, being truthful: We all cover small blunders with pretty little lies; we all package unpleasant feedback in ornate narrations; we all push the big inconvenient truths of sickness, old age, death, or climate collapse to the margins of our minds. All these non-truths helps us function in the world, and we rightly call them smart, kind, or practical. But the truth within doesn’t go away – just like in that other famous song fragment: There is a truth in everything, that’s how the light gets in³.

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