By Isaac Christopher Lubogo
There are few agonies more suffocating than watching your truth sink into silence while someone else’s lie grows wings and soars. It is not simply the injustice of being misunderstood—it is the feeling of being erased, overwritten by a version of reality that you know, with every cell of your being, is false.
In those moments, you learn a painful lesson about the mechanics of human perception: people do not always believe what is true—they believe what is repeated, what is convenient, what fits the story they have already decided to accept. The lie thrives not because it is convincing in substance, but because it is clothed in the theatre of certainty, in the boldness of the teller, in the gossip that finds comfort in the sensational over the factual.
1. The Psychological Wound
When a lie about you gains traction, it creates a fracture deep inside. You find yourself rehearsing explanations that never reach the right ears, crafting defenses that dissolve before you can speak them. The human soul longs for recognition, for the dignity of being heard and understood. When that is denied, the wound is not just emotional—it is existential.
You begin to doubt the worth of your own truth. If my truth is real, why does no one defend it? If the lie is false, why does it grow so easily? That is the slow poison—when the world’s rejection of your truth begins to feel like a rejection of you.
2. Why Lies Stick
Lies are sticky because they often feed on human weakness. They are easier to digest than the complicated, nuanced reality of the truth. They appeal to emotion before they appeal to reason. They require no evidence—only a confident tongue and a willing ear.
In Uganda, we have a saying: “Ekifuga ky’omuliro tekya kyokka, kiba n’embuzi emyogi”—the fire does not burn alone, it has the goat that fans it. Lies are rarely born alone; they are carried, fanned, and fed by people who find them useful. Sometimes the lie flatters their prejudice. Sometimes it just makes for a better story than the quiet, unromantic truth.
3. The Pain of Watching
What makes it unbearable is not just the lie itself, but the crowd that cheers it on. People you thought were allies keep their distance. Friends become silent observers, unwilling to challenge the popular narrative. And those who know the truth sometimes say nothing—not because they do not care, but because they fear the cost of standing with you.
In that silence, the lie becomes a monument, and you are left as the invisible shadow cast by it. You learn how cold social abandonment can feel, even in a crowded room.
4. The Temptation of Bitterness
When your truth is rejected, bitterness comes knocking. You imagine exposing your accuser, tearing down their credibility, or even manufacturing your own counter-lie. But here lies the danger: if you let bitterness define your response, you risk becoming the very thing you are fighting against—a manipulator of narratives, a dealer in distortion.
The greater pain is realizing that the longer you fight in the arena of lies, the more you smell like it.
5. The Hard Discipline of Waiting
Sometimes the only path left is the most humiliating one—silence. Not the silence of defeat, but the silence of the farmer who knows that not all seeds sprout in the same season. Truth, unlike a lie, does not need constant performance to survive. It sits in the soil of reality, waiting for its time.
History is full of names once mocked, defamed, and discarded—only to be vindicated when the lie’s gloss wore thin. Nelson Mandela spent 27 years branded a terrorist before becoming a global symbol of justice. In that arc is a painful but liberating truth: the world’s opinion is not the final court.
6. The African Wisdom in Such Moments
Our elders say: “Omugongo gwewulira, gwe gufa”—the back that carries the load is the one that feels the pain. Those who carry the truth often bear their suffering in private. And yet, in the quiet weight of that burden, there is a strange dignity. You become the custodian of something uncorrupted, something that no rumor mill can manufacture—your conscience.
And conscience, unlike public opinion, is incorruptible.
7. The Liberation
When your truth doesn’t stick, you must resist the lie’s invitation to shape your identity. You are not what they say you are—you are who you remain to be when the noise fades. Let the lie live its short, noisy life. Time is the great solvent; it will strip it bare.
Because when the dust finally settles, the lie will have nothing to stand on but the emptiness from which it came. Your truth, though battered and bruised, will remain rooted in the ground of reality.
Final Word
The real pain is not that the lie wins—it is that the lie wins for now. The real comfort is that truth does not have an expiry date. And the real discipline is to keep living as if you are already vindicated, because in the deeper court of existence—you already are.
# Suigeneris