Transparency & Accountability

 Though people profess to admire transparency, they are curiously fond of secrets; wearing them like finely tailored coats, too heavy in the summer heat, yet impossible to shed for fear of feeling exposed. To stand bare and firmly in the light seems a kind of death, so they build little fortresses for a sense of control, however momentary - an illusion of safety, as though a hidden truth might preserve them from judgement or loss.

The irony lingers in the air like perfume: what they fear most - the gaze seeing them whole - is the very thing that would save them. Only in the fragile risk of transparency could they hope to touch something like inner peace.

People cling to their secrets not out of malice, but from the quiet dread of accountability. To keep something hidden is to escape the mirror, to delay the moment when truth demands its due. They tell themselves it is about privacy, discretion, even dignity - but beneath it all is the fear of being measured, of having to answer for the choices that shaped them.

Accountability is a stern companion; requiring one to stand in the open, stripped of excuses, and face consequences and growth. Reticence only tightens the chains. The strange mercy of that responsibility is this: once accepted, it liberates the heart.

To live with transparency, begin with the smallest confessions - the kind that seem too trivial to matter, yet channel the soul in quiet ways. It is the courage to speak one's truth when silence would be easier, the willingness to admit a fault before it grows heavy with time. Accountability is not a grand performance but a daily practice, a kind of tender housekeeping of the spirit. Each act of honesty clears a window pane, and through it life looks sharper, brighter, less burdened by the haze of pretense.

In learning to answer for ourselves with grace, we discover that integrity is not a weight but a lightness, and that there is an extraordinary, almost intoxicating freedom in being wholly seen.