"Love" on a Jumbotron

Self-Deception, Sin, and the Stories We Tell Ourselves

No one expects to see their sins on a jumbotron. And yet, that’s exactly what happened to Astronomer CEO Andy Byron and the firm’s chief human resources officer, Kristin Cabot. Both are married to other people, but were happily ensconced in one another’s arms—just another couple among the nameless thousands swaying at a Coldplay concert in a football stadium.

That anonymity ended when a kiss cam transformed them into a viral flashpoint of schadenfreude, with one of the world’s most famous singers stating the obvious: they appeared to be having an affair.

I'm sure the couple could offer a litany of justifications: an emotionally distant spouse, a deep and undeniable connection, an old wound this new relationship seemed to soothe. From the inside, they likely believe their situation is different—real, textured, compelling…love.

That’s the thing about persistent sins: over time, we become desensitized to them. We want to persist, so we find ways to obscure plain realities. We all do this to some extent—craft narratives that make our choices feel inevitable, excusable, even noble. There are so many ways that we who know our situations intimately can find the nuances, complexities, mitigating factors.

But that’s just the thing: in one sense, they know their situation far better than any of us scrolling the internet and gawking at the spectacle. But in another, more crucial sense, they have no real perspective on the truth of it at all. They’ve used the nuances to hide from themselves.

That instinct to hide kicked in immediately as the camera captured them, because hiding is the heartbeat of an affair, as it is with all sin. Perhaps it took a global pop star and a 10,000-foot view—quite literally—for reality to break through: this isn’t love or healing or destiny. It’s just the same old story of a tawdry affair. It is boring as sin.