It’s Time to Tell Your Truth on Medium
Finding your freedom is better than being curated
Ernest Hemingway once gave sage advice for any writer struggling with ideas, about where to even begin with the pen to paper. He said, “just write one true sentence.”
I’ve wrestled with sentences I thought were true, only to erase them, pondering if it was a figment of my imagination. Worse, I’ve penned entire paragraphs of niceties posing as truth when they were just decoration, a pendulum swinging toward the neck of intimacy.
Because to know the truth about something, it has to be told. It must be communicated in some way. I’ve stepped back from the ledge of truth-telling, of exposing my fears and insecurities to a world that wears its own mask.
I say all this to present one of the most beautiful paragraphs I’ve ever read. Ocean Vuong, a Vietnamese author, had this to say about the sudden frailty of freedom:
“I was writing because they told me to never start a sentence with because. But I wasn’t trying to make a sentence- I was trying to break free. Because freedom, I am told. Is nothing but the distance between the hunter and its prey.”
