The Ugly Truth: A Call to Purpose

Erik Hendin
Sep 20
3 min read

What is "the ugly truth?" Ask five people, and you'll get five different answers. Google AI tells me it's "a harsh reality that is difficult to face."

On a personal level, it’s a messy reality we avoid because it threatens the comfortable stories we tell ourselves. It’s the veil we keep pulled tightly over things we don’t know how to fix.

Yet embracing it, accepting it, may be the very thing that can set us free.

A man with a successful career feels empty, stripped of meaning, unsure if his work matters anymore.
A relationship slips into destructive patterns that feel impossible to break.
Debt piles higher, while we smile and pretend everything’s fine.
A health scare calls a warning we’re too busy or afraid to hear.
Perfectionism or people-pleasing behavior that leaves us stuck, hollow, and unseen.
Death, divorce, or loss shatters the life we thought we knew.

Whether we face it or not, life eventually forces us to reckon with the consequences of either our actions, or simply face the crazy events that we're thrown.

And denial can come with a painful price.

But what if that breaking point - that looks like failure - is actually a doorway to change?

What if the ugly truth is not the end, but the beginning of something deeper?

After too many broken relationships, a man finally turns inward. He finds a therapist, new friends, and the courage to work through his problems and rediscover himself.
Drowning in debt, another man chooses free activities that feed his soul. Writing, creating art, hiking. Ironically, life feels richer as he spends less.
A heart attack becomes a wake-up call, leading to new habits—diet, exercise, mindfulness—that transform recovery into empowerment.
A man with prestige and status admits money isn’t enough. He leaves it behind for teaching, writing, or creating. Scary, yes—but fulfilling.

And then there are those private, unnameable feelings we can’t seem to shake, the ones we push down again and again.

For me, they often come out in my original songs. I’ve written my share of dark tunes over the years. (I even wrote a song called "The Ugly Truth" this year.) But almost always, after pouring the darkness and futility out onto paper, I feel lighter. Relieved. Sometimes even liberated. What once lived hidden and repressed in the shadows is now right in front of me in a form I can express and tangibly feel— in music and lyrics.

The act of honesty cracks the door open to something new.

When we choose to sit with our pain—really sit with it, no matter how uncomfortable—our perspective can shift. Even if it doesn’t fix everything, it can give us one more reason to keep going.

In the past few years, life has tested me to the core. Many of the struggles I describe here are ones I'm facing right now and will continue to face in the years ahead.

I’ve had to reevaluate everything I thought I knew.

I write these articles because these struggles are real, and for me, when I can create, or manifest these ideas in verbal form, the world makes more sense to me. I am a little stronger, and I feel possibility in my life again.

In suffering, we can find resilience.
In the ugly truth, we can find purpose.

Life doesn’t transform overnight. And we can't solve all our problems at once. But it can change if we want it badly enough to change, and if we are willing to take action.

If we can keep coming back to ourselves, asking: Is there a solution hidden inside this problem? What do I need right now? What makes me feel alive? What drives me every day to get up in the morning?

When we start facing these things, asking the right questions and acting on them, then the ugly truth becomes less of a curse, and more of a compass.