Trust in the path. What wise words Greg told me the other day. If you trust in the path, you let yourself free. My sister in her profile today wrote “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” – Laozi.
What a unbelievable quote. The past few days I have been feeling unbelievably happy. I think that’s because I know that I am trusting in the path. The daunting amount of time in front of me no longer affects me. The fears are gone, the emotions are settling, but most importantly the trust is present. And because of this, I am calm, collected, and happy. I trust you. I trust you a lot.
One of my favorite poems ever is by Robert Frost “The Road less traveled by.” This has always been in the back of my head when I am making decisions about anything or just going about life day to day. I always try to go against the grain and take the road that is covered with leaves or looks scary. Most of us take the road that is cleared and we can see easily. But if we take that road, we don’t discover anything about ourselves. What ends up happening is when we take the easy road, we protect ourselves from failing, from hurting, from being insecure. But when we take the road less traveled by, we subject ourselves to all of life’s unknowns. One of the quotes on my status today was “Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.” – Ray Bradbury.
This is what I am doing right now. I am taking a leap of faith. Its really easy to protect yourself after something has happened in your life. You want to box up and build walls. But I sit here before you completely unprotected, and that’s the way I want to stay. I tell it like I see it with myself. If I see something I can fix or construct, you can be sure I am working on it or drawing it out. And yes, I am currently under construction. Put your hard hat on. The scaffolding is up, and the contractors are here. Lets do work.
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I couldTo where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood,
and I—I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
So take the road less traveled by.
Challenge yourself every day to do something that scares you. You will be scared, but I promise you that you will come out much better for it and in turn more confident. You will fail though, that’s a given. Just like life creating good times and bad times, you will fail most likely more than you succeed. For me, I know I am trying new things when there is a lot of failure happening in my life. But I look at this failure and learn from it, and then try again and again till I get it right. I am sure that the people who saw me in the gym this summer were laughing when they saw me trying to dunk. “Stupid white boy.” But I kept trying and trying and training like crazy. I dunked once before someone put their knee into my knee in a game and blew my knee out. But hey, those 3 months of constant training and struggle allowed me to finally dunk, and damn it was worth it.
I am trusting in the path again. My faith guides me, and I am fully willing to let it.
The past couple weeks I have been questioning everything, but that’s okay. I understand that the pain was just part of the process. If I didn’t feel any pain, then I know I didn’t care.
But now here I am, painless, smiling while I write this, looking forward to tomorrow, and laughing about how much I lived today.
Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project