I Chose To Keep It Real

THE HIDDEN COST OF PRETENDING TO BE OKAY

Hello #scifimultiverse, I trust you are doing great. It is no news that we are living in a world where a lot of pretense goes on without minding the cost of such risk.

Pretence can be defined as a life of deceit. Giving a false impression of who we are. This can be in relation to our health, financial or social status, or the things we have.

One day, my boss and I were having a one-to-one meeting with employees, a fact-finding mission to understand their present predicament and find a way to address the economic challenges I presented to the board. Some were sincere to bare it all, some hid the truth about their situations and chose to hide under the pretense that they were okay.

After the meeting, I was asked to generate a report based on a worst-case scenario and use data analytics of average, minimum, and maximum for my presentation. Those who were adjudged to be high were those who spoke their truth and let the rat out of the bag. Some of them became emotional that day and cried their hearts out for help. Those ones were the ones that got the highest level of support, cash gifts, and allowances were packaged for them, while those that pretended to be okay were just given a transportation allowance.

At the end, when those who pretended to be okay learnt that the other employees who spoke their truth got from the management, they became jealous and unhappy. Some of them tried to meet with me to reverse their feedback, but it was too late, as I wasn’t able to help them.

That pretense cost them a lot. In the same way, some employees during recruitment will lie about their health condition by presenting a forged hospital document, which is a gross misconduct. By the time we sent them to our hospital for a medical check-up, some of them would have disappeared, losing out on the recruitment. Some will not even be fit to engage in a job after presenting a forged certificate of fitness.

Pretending to be okay reduces people’s integrity and opportunities. It portrays such persons in a bad light, while living in reality proves our integrity, opens opportunities for us, connects us with the right people, and brings goodwill to us.

In conclusion, I chose real over fake living. I detest pretending to be okay when I am not. I chose to keep it real.

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