A Spark by Innocent Mwatsikesimbe from The Vision, chapter 58

People lie for all kinds of reasons — some good, some bad, some in the grey. The line Innocent draws is at lying to himself. When he tries to believe something apart from reality, shame arrives, and he treats it as a signal rather than a nuisance: “I am a person who accepts reality as I see it, and live a true life; true to myself.”

Given the choice between a comfortable lie and a painful truth he takes the truth, on the grounds that “living a lie is more painful.” That comparison is the whole argument. A hard truth hurts once, out in the open. A lie has to be kept up, and it keeps charging you.

So the expectations he answers to are mostly his own. Other people’s he lets in only at the edges, subliminally, never by choice.