Tell the Truth

Dear Dara:

I write this as I watch you playing in the trees in our front yard. You are seven years old, and even though toggling between work and being your mom has sometimes been difficult in these last few months, you are a lovely distraction. You make Derby floats for school projects at the kitchen table. You doodle on papers scattered across the floor. You disappear in trees sheathed in cherry buds that flare against the slate sky. You move nimbused in your own imagination, and in the clean flame of your creativity, I find calm. Especially now, when everything’s on fire.

In these agonizing months, the world has slid off a precipice. About 67,000 US Americans have died from COVID-19. The current unemployment rate may have topped 14%. Our policymakers have deemed this, of all times, to be a good opportunity to suction even more money up the corporate pyramid. New York City is burying its dead in mass graves in Hart Island, off the coast of the Bronx, long used as the city’s potter’s field. Into the earth they go — the daring, the bold, the disruptive, the fearless. “Imagine anyone who passes away and there’s no one to claim the body. This has been the truth for generations,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said. This is the truth for generations today: Any of us may die. Any of us may be unemployed. Any of our businesses may default. We are in the fire, and now is the time to tell the truth.

The last time I felt this way was when you were born. I felt a great fear surrounding me, because I knew then what all parents know: There are no rules. Anything can happen, and I cannot save you from all the dangers in the world. But I was not scared. I was pushed beyond exhaustion, so when someone lay bullshit on me, I cut it with the truth. I dragged lies into the light. I felt my fear rippling away from me. I was not there to placate other people — I was there to protect you. I never want you to constrict your intelligence or to be compliant to accommodate someone else’s insecurities. I want you to tell your truth. Because that will be your polestar in times of fire, in times of mass graves, when certainty is extinguished and the way forward is treacherous.

As you get older, you will understand that there are different versions of the truth. Most adult interaction is gray. Nonfiction is fiction. I am not trying to wade too far into philosophy. I am merely saying that gaslighting and prevaricating and rationalizing will never serve you, and it may destroy you. You will find this to be true in your personal and your professional lives. In my personal life, you and your father have preserved my sanity. In my professional life, the culture of Mightily, the branding agency where I work, anchors me whenever I feel unmoored. We hire people at Mightily like you and your father — people who are daring, bold, disruptive, fearless. And we give them a handbook with this headline: “There are thousands of words in this book. Three matter most. Tell the truth.”

“Brands” are much in vogue these days. Teenage influencers have brands. Beers have brands. Generally, that term denotes a second personality glitzier than the real thing. So, in some ways, “brand” has become a byword for inauthentic facsimiles. (Think commercials about sparkling water injected with hit songs.) One reason I work at Mightily is because we do the opposite. We don’t over-decorate our clients’ brands. We eliminate the excess. We distill brands to their core. Brand isn’t logos or colors or aesthetics. All those things become the brand, but it’s way deeper than that. And I have found a workplace that weaves the guiding principle of my personal and my professional lives together so I can tell the truth as an implement to remove obstacles, to do good work, to serve as a divining-rod to find our way out of the fire.

In times of agony, it may seem silly to cling to values. Values feel so wispy. But when the bottom line is cracked, you don’t give up on your values. You dig deeper into them, because they aren’t worth anything if they don’t help you when they matter the most. Your core values should withstand the fire. Fires split rock and raze cities and consume forests. You can lose everything in the fire. Yet fires also forge confidence. They burn the gristle off your soul. Truth is a kind of fire. When truth immolates the inessential, what remains is your brand. When the kiln reaches unbearable intensity, what gets stronger is your deepest belief. And this is what I am trying to tell you, my daughter: What still lives after the fire is the clean flame already kindled within you — everything about you that is daring and bold and disruptive and fearless.

Special thanks to Charles Wolford for bringing this story to life.