There’s so much in this tank.
Every day I’m starting to realize that you can’t just jam on the gas when you have 1,000hp under the hood. You have to slow and steady press down the pedal and give it a little bit of time to hit peak velocity. I have a million things that I want to do, need to do, and am called to do. I think that there’s been so much I’ve just been trying to figure out the best way of doing it all. I’ve got it now.
Sometimes you just have to turn it all on and see what the hell happens. Makes me think of Chevy Chase Christmas vacation when he plugs in his beast of a light show. I might pop the fuse box…maybe take down the power grid…but I’ll never know if I never try. I’ll never give myself to figure out how to secure more capacity and light up the town.
I’m at that moment standing on the edge. Nervous and excited at the same time.
I have to risk it all in order to gain. I’ve tried to piece by piece this and it just doesn’t work. It has to be all in or nothing at all.
Nothing has never been my style.
For me, it’s not necessarily about constantly creating the new, but also about dealing with the old in a completely honest way. I have been addressing issues in the past for years now, but there has never been a time in my life where I have been this honest. This pure. This open. I have always had a bit of a nervous agenda when traveling backwards. But now, with new support and a little bit of courage, I am telling it like it is. The people around me know. They are now familiar with my actual story – not just the one I want to tell.
This truth may be hard for some to swallow, but it is the truth. I’ve always been afraid of divulging everything there is about my life because some of the things that happened are intense. They are intense in a good way and some in a very challenging way. But that’s me though. That’s me down to my core and it’s just who I am. It’s the life I have lived and if I am afraid of speaking about it then who in the world is actually going to like me for me?
No one.
The truth is all sorts of things. It is liberating, vulnerable, honest, painful, and anything else you can imagine. You can destroy others with the truth, you can destroy yourself with the truth, you can build incredible things with the truth…there really is nothing out there like it. Love is in the same seat as the truth. If you really love yourself and you love others then they deserve nothing short of honesty – no matter how hard it is to tell. Because love transcends all other B.S.
We all do stupid things. We all lose ourselves from time to time. We all make poor decisions that cause pain in ourselves and in others. But we are nothing without the truth. We are shades of ourselves – never truly the real thing. We are dulled around the edges by the words and thoughts we use to describe the events of our lives.
I would rather be sharp as hell than untrue to myself.
To be honest, while sitting here writing about it…I feel slightly liberated already. I think that the people you are supposed to end up with, both romantically and in friendships are the ones you don’t have to hide your secrets from. They are the ones who love you purely for you. We all have these secrets, and to a degree they control us if we don’t let them out. Mine are being unearthed and as hard as it is sometimes to tell them, as much as it makes me tremble or even cry, I have to get them out so I can grow. In time, the chains come off.
We all have a covenant to make. Mine is being renewed.
I’m growing. I’m feeling those pains. I’m feeling the old getting torn out of my body like lifting a sheet with your fingertips. Fear is leaking out my elbows. Nerves out the back of my neck. Doubt dripping down the center of my back. Legs bending and tensing to go. My gut is pitted…and then…
Leap.
Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project