In that midnight I learn.

That stillness of the dark. Everything is dead quiet. But that dead quiet, if you listen hard enough, opens up your ears to the sounds in between them. It gives you access to hearing your thoughts. That little voice that you couldn’t hear before because it was drowning in your day to day – it is now open to have a conversation with.

I’ll be honest, accessing this has been difficult at times over the past few months. I’ve been trying to decide on whether to build something or not. I’ve was trying to commit to something. I was trying to search for something inside of me. I was trying to say something which I just couldn’t get out.

And then it happened.

It swept all over me at once. Like a wave I was waiting for. I faced the ocean for so many months waiting for that rogue wall of water to come over me and it did. Not in a violent way, but in the most peaceful way you could imagine. There is undeniable calmness. Peacefulness. Happiness.

Bring your enemy into the light.

For some, our greatest enemy is something inside. An addiction, a problem, a plagued way of thinking about things. Others have issues in the physical world with a person etc. But we all find ways to justify keeping our enemy hidden from the world. “Many people have this issue.” “Oh it’s not so bad.” “I’ll take care of it tomorrow.” All the while, your enemy digs its feet into your heart. The more you justify, the more you hide, the greater the challenge becomes and the closer you become to cracking.

I have spent a great deal of my time here on this earth battling. And to a degree, I believe there was a time and a place for that. I still fully believe that having that in my arsenal – the ability to battle it out with something that is festering inside will come in handy. This will not be the last time something strikes me deep within and rattles the cage for a while. However, it was in that midnight sky that peacefulness flooded into my life.

When you bring your issue into the light and embrace it for what it is, you then have the ability to work on it. Admit your current state. A great deal of the time we don’t want to talk about where we are because even we are embarrassed of it. Bring it out. Declare your enemy to the world. Never fear taking something you thought was so bad and bringing it out.

I’m on a new journey. It’s funny to sit back and think of how this journey started in the first place. But what I have come to realize is that there are many journeys within this one major one. I divert. I fall off. But I always get back on. No matter what is going on in my life. I always get right back on the train tracks and move forward. If I could encourage you in any way possible, it would be to start your own journey. Just start walking and figure it out along the way. Fear will paralyze you if you don’t act when you know you should.

Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project