Why the truth, like hair and nails, keeps growing back.
The phone rings. “Where are you?”
“Five minutes away,” we say, with twenty minutes of road still ahead of us.
Such a small lie. Nobody gets hurt. Yet listen closely and you can hear something crack. The part of us that knows the truth and the part that just spoke no longer agree. Psychologists call that gap cognitive dissonance. I call it the first stone in the shoe.
Rajniti ki dosti. Friendship in politics lasts exactly as long as the grievance that binds it. Many of us run our inner lives the same way. We make alliances with whatever soothes us today, and we stay chronically dissatisfied, because a bargain built on convenience can never feed the soul.
The trap
One small lie needs a second to protect it. The second needs a third. Run from the truth and the road grows narrower and longer, and the knot grows thicker. Every escape route we build turns into one more wall to stumble against.
And we stumble alone. A lie is the loneliest room in the house, because nobody else is allowed inside it.
So what do we do?
Look at your fingernails. Look at your hair. You cut them and they grow back. Nobody trims their nails once and declares the job done for life. We tend them week after week, without shame or drama.
The problems of life behave in exactly the same way. Impatience, envy, the urge to dodge an awkward truth: they all grow back. Expect to be finished with them forever and every Monday morning will feel like defeat. Pick up the scissors calmly, again and again, and you grow.
That is progress. A steady hand, used often.
So the next time the phone rings and someone asks where you are, try the bravest small sentence of the day:
“I’m twenty minutes away.”
Watch what happens. The knot loosens, the road opens up, and you walk in with nothing to hide.
Two questions to sit with
- Which small lie did I tell this week, and what was it really protecting?
- What keeps growing back in my life, and how can I tend it calmly instead of fighting it?
Dr Shiam Chuttoo
© Dr Shiam Chuttoo, 2026. Free to share for personal and educational use with credit. For any other use, please ask my permission.
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