#114 What You Keep Saying Has Already Eaten What You Lived

There's a strange asymmetry in how we treat two kinds of falsehood.

A concrete lie — 'I went to the gym' when you didn't — has a short shelf life. It can be checked, caught, and killed. One specific falsehood, one specific cost.

But a vague falsehood — 'I'm living my truth' — never has to answer for itself. It maps to nothing. So it survives every conversation, every retelling, every year. It costs nothing to produce and nothing to verify.

The problem is, vague falsehoods don't just fill empty moments. They gradually become the only way you know how to say anything about yourself. And with enough repetition, they become what you remember. You didn't just lose the ability to describe your experience. You lost the experience itself and kept the packaging.