In this blog, I confront the seductive pull of narratives that masquerade as truth but operate like viruses—infecting minds and demanding replication. I encounter someone fervent and certain, yet realize their passion masks a deeper compulsion to convert rather than connect. As I listen, I re-anchor in the realization that real life only ever happens in the immediacy of “me, here, now”—and anything else is a trap. I draw the line between quiet truth and noisy illusion, recognizing the need to walk away not from people, but from the contagious stories that pull us from presence.
Though I do not engage very much with people who want to persuade me of something, there is one person who recently entered into my field—urgent, animated, and sure of what they knew. They had a story to tell. A big one. The kind with hidden enemies, epic stakes, and a dark force just out of view. I could feel it right away: this wasn’t just a conversation. This was a transmission. A virus looking for a host.
Normally I walk away. I’ve learned not to engage with story goblins—those people so possessed by their narrative that they stop speaking to you and start speaking through you, as if you were just another node in their broadcast network. But something in me stirred this time. Maybe I thought I could help. Maybe I forgot, just for a second, how addictive the battle can be.
So I listened. And then I said what I’ve come to understand: These stories—no matter how righteous they feel—pull you away from the only place anything real ever happens: me, here, now. They are always about not me. Not here. Not now. They ask you to enter a fight that isn’t yours, against enemies you can’t touch, for a cause you can never complete. They are designed to keep you fighting. Forever. Or until you collapse from exhaustion. Or take it to your grave.
The person didn’t like that. They stood by their conviction. They were certain. They believed they were standing in truth. But that’s the trick, isn’t it? Conviction feels like truth. It borrows the strength of certainty. But when you peel it back, you often find a looping narrative that never lands. That always needs to be shared. Always needs to be believed. Always needs an audience.
So I asked them: If this is truly the truth, why does it need to spread? What kind of truth dies in isolation? What kind of truth demands converts to survive? Would you be content to just keep this truth to yourself? That’s when I said it plainly: This is the disease. Not the story itself—but the need to infect others with it. Because truth doesn’t spread like a virus. Only illusions do.
The truth stands on its own. Quiet. Unshaken. If I were the only one on Earth who saw it, it would still be just as real. But falsehood needs company. It needs movement. It needs others to believe, because it cannot hold its own shape in silence. That’s how I knew: this wasn’t a person sharing insight. This was a story looking for a new host. And in that moment, I remembered why I usually walk away. Because the only battle worth fighting is the one to remain here, now, me. Everything else is noise.
Everything else is the wilderness.And I’ve already come back from that.
…