If you travel all this way and you forget who you are, then whats the point? 

You can lose yourself in this game easily. The hate and hurt can mount up and destroy everything you have worked for and everything you dream of.

There’s no explaining these things, but in my stomach this morning I can feel the yearning for a love so deep that I can physically feel it. I remember the times where it made itself known, and how deep I would feel it. It’s like there was this bottomless pit and you could feel it sinking in like a cannonball rolling down a tube. There’s something about that moment when you look at someone you love, and I mean romantically love, and you feel it in your bones and everything else you are made of. You see them sick and you will do anything to take care of them. Even though you want to strangle them sometimes because they know exactly how to push your buttons, you can’t help but laugh and love because you have something so great in your life.  You see them hurting and all you could ever want for them is to smile. Because those smiles, no matter how few because of how much of a shitstorm life has produced, are the best part of your day.

I have had an introspective few days ::saying this as if thats not like every other day:: and I came across an interesting thought. In every situation, no matter how painful – we had our part to play (please exclude extremes). When I look back, and I did this with an honest set of eyes yesterday, I can see he piece of the puzzle that have my name written all over them. Those pieces were claimed through indecision and an inability to make choices about my own life. They say that hindsight is always 20/20, and to an extent I agree with this, but if you are looking back once in a while and being honest with yourself, your vision doesn’t actually exist.

People, emotions, and decisions are incredibly complex and it’s amazing that we even get along in the first place. So many things can go wrong. In fact, most of the time, they do. Misunderstandings and incalculable situations arise and we just have to give it our best shot. When we look back, we sometimes realize that our best shot at that time was so far off from what was needed. Our best shot can only improve with understanding the mistakes we have made and then trying to correct them.

For a long time, I wasn’t honest with myself. I wasn’t honest with myself about what actually happened, about my part to play, about why things were going on in my life and about what it meant for me to have a passion and purpose. Dishonesty with others will cause pain, but dishonesty with yourself will cause heartbreak. You will stand in front of the mirror a complete shadow of the person you thought you could be, the person you dreamed of, and realize in looking down at your own hands that you created that.

Inner conflict creates indecision and harbors negative feelings. These negative feelings I am talking about come along once in a while – those ones where you promote jealousy, passive aggressiveness and everything else in the book. You act because you are trying to do something to someone or to the world. But the answer don’t lie there. The answers are what you do with yourself for people and for the world. Throughout the years I have become better about making decisions that are for things rather than against things, but I am still learning and I am sure it will take some time.

I’ll tell you one last thing. Whenever you make a decision that is rooted in love rather than anything else, you can be proud of that decision. Sometimes your mind will try to convince you to not do something, to make you forget who you are inside, and while you might not understand it at the time (and friends might not understand what you did) you make that decision because the deepest rawest most precious emotion in your heart told you to do it.

And to me, thats priceless.

Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project