The world is a shitty place. It is. There’s no point skirting around it. We all know it. We all see it everyday. It’s on the news, it’s on the streets as we walk to work, it’s in our schools, our workplaces and in our government. The world is a shitty place and we all just run around in denial.

People are dying in awful conditions. Cruelty is being enacted in the rooms next door to us. Evil is very much in existence in every nook and cranny of our sheltered little lives and we are blind to it all. No, we are not blind, we simply choose not to see it.

We wear masks and we pretend. We grin a fake grin, we hold our head high, we march confidently forward and we pretend that it isn’t all that bad. But deep down we know the truth.

Deep down there is a pain, there is a canker that is rotting away at our hearts and we just try to ignore it. Humanity is crying at its core and we wear blinkers.

We fake it all. We pretend that we enjoy life. We pretend with our friends. We pretend with our families. We pretend we like our job and our hobbies and our homes and our cars. We pretend to enjoy the company of our children. We pretend to enjoy the beautiful views over Bray Head on a Sunday afternoon. It’s all a pretence.

And some people believe it. Maybe. Some people think the world isn’t so bad, that there is a goodness somewhere. Fans of chick flicks and Frank Darabont movies might call it hope. But it’s not hope – it’s fear. Fear of the truth. What if this is it? What if the world is beyond saving and cruelty is truly at the heart of man? Fear is why we pretend. Fear is why we wear our masks and force our way through ordinary lives. Fear is why we plan for the future and try to fill the present with something resembling meaning.

And I do the same. I pretend. I smile. I work. I laugh. I play. I drink. I eat. I wash. I pick out new clothes. I buy DVDs. I book tickets to gigs. I make phonecalls. I send emails. I get up in the morning. I do all of this because the realisation of the truth is so unpleasant. I am afraid of the truth. I am terrified of the fact that the entire world is indeed a shitty place. So, I…we pretend. And we get on with life.

But it just takes one small jolt. It takes a tiny moment to bring the pretence to a crashing halt. It could be a person, an event, a picture, a song, a painful memory. For some it could take a visit to a war torn country, for others it could simply be a sad movie. But when that crashing realisation occurs, it hurts. The painful canker at our hearts bursts to the surface and screams in our ears. It tears at our flesh and poisons the air around us.

There is no punchline, no happy moral, no saving grace or offer of hope for the future. This morning I am not in denial. I know how awful everything, every moment, every empty thought is. By this afternoon, I’ll be back pretending and I’ll scoff at all of the above. I’ll believe I just got out of bed on the wrong side and that I’m low in sodium. I’ll accept that it was an aberration and that the world is as good as we choose to make it. I’ll buy into it all. But I’ll be wrong.