Keeping Your Own Light

Courage, curiosity, and telling yourself the truth

Some days it feels less like the world is speaking to us and more like it is shouting. Headlines, feeds, group chats. Opinions are being delivered to us as if volume were proof. In that kind of noise, we don’t just lose perspective; we risk losing our own inner sense of what is true and what kind of world we still want to help build.

In my last piece, I wrote about courage and curiosity as forces we need out in the world. Today, I felt the need for a more personal reflection on how we use that same courage and curiosity to stay grounded inside ourselves.

Because when we lose our footing internally, it becomes very easy to be swept into whatever narrative is loudest, most repeated, or most emotionally charged, whether or not it is real.

Courage, turned inward

Courage is not only standing up to others. Often, the quieter and harder courage is not abandoning yourself.

It is the courage to admit, “I am scared,” without letting fear write the entire story. It is the courage to say, “I don’t know yet,” in a culture that rewards instant certainty. And it’s the courage to turn down the volume long enough to sit with your own thoughts, even when they are uncomfortable.

Staying positive in a screaming world isn’t about pretending everything is fine.

It’s about having the courage to look honestly at what isn’t fine, while refusing to let that be the only truth you live from.

Curiosity, as an anchor

Curiosity keeps us from getting trapped inside someone else’s script.

When a narrative feels overwhelming, when it insists that everything is falling apart or that nothing matters, curiosity creates a pause. It lets us ask whether this is the whole story, who benefits if we believe it without question, and what we might not be seeing yet.

Curiosity does not dilute truth. It deepens it. It widens the lens so we can hold complexity, context, and contradiction at the same time. It helps us notice not only the damage but also the helpers, the builders, and the quiet acts of care and repair that rarely make headlines.

This is how we begin to form an authentic narrative about the world. Not by denying the dark, but by refusing to erase the light.

Building a narrative based on truth

In a time of manufactured outrage and performance, shaping your own narrative is a radical act. It starts personally.

Notice how you feel after consuming certain stories. More anxious? More hopeless? More numb? Your reaction is information.

Ask whether what you are being told matches what you actually see in your lived life, with real people. If it doesn’t, your nervous system may be responding to distortion rather than reality.

Look deliberately for evidence of care, courage, and decency in your immediate world. Name it. Let it count as data.

Truth is not just the worst thing that’s happening. Truth is the whole field: the grief and the danger, alongside the bravery, the tenderness, and the ordinary kindness that rarely trends.

When we allow our inner narrative to be shaped by the full truth, we don’t drift into denial; rather, we stand more firmly on the ground. It is from that ground that a different kind of positivity becomes possible. This is not blind optimism. It is a clear-eyed commitment to keep bringing light where we can.

Holding the light

So how do we stay steady when the world is loud?

We don’t close our eyes. We don’t pretend it’s quiet. We also don’t let the noise decide who we are.

We turn courage inward, staying with ourselves and what we feel without turning away. We turn curiosity outward, questioning the narratives handed to us and seeking fuller truths.

Slowly, day by day, we write a narrative we can stand inside. It’s the one where the world is wounded but not hopeless, and our choices still matter. The one where keeping a light on is not naïve but necessary.

This is the narrative I’m choosing to live in, not because the world is calm, but because I refuse to let the noise be the only thing that speaks. 

If this resonates, I would love to hear from you. What helps you stay grounded so you can tell yourself the truth when the noise gets loud?