Everyone doesn’t need to know everything. But this doesn’t mean we live a secret life – always having to sneak and hide to do what we want to do. Part of maturity is the freedom and confidence to live our life in the open with no need to hide.
All too often we live like the proverbial kid stealing a cookie from the cookie jar. We want what we want but assume it won’t be given to us if we ask, and that we’ll get in trouble if we get caught red-handed. And so, we sneak and hide to enjoy our guilty pleasures.
While perhaps understandable for a kid who still needs his parents’ permission for many things, this is not the spirit in which we should live our lives as adults. We should not have to sneak and hide in our life as grown men.
Of course, not everyone will be happy with our decisions. But once we’ve filtered our decisions through our own core values and beliefs, and counted the cost, then our choice is made with our integrity intact and we have nothing to hide.
In fact, we appear more suspicious when we continue to sneak around. Honorable actions have no need to hide from the light of day.
To be sure, this is not discounting the need to wisely discern what and when to share with others. But it is a reminder to consider the very spirit in which we make our decisions. And a life of hiding is likely pointing to either dishonorable behaviors, or simply immaturity and a lack of inner confidence.
In the end, live in the freedom and confidence of maturity. There’s no need to hide when living a life of integrity.
Photo by Gift Habeshaw on Unsplash
