“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence than you know.” – Ernest Hemingway
For years, the hardest thing I have had to do when coming to these pages is find a way to tell the truth about what is going on in my heart when it is in pain.
My fingers struggle to type not because they are unable, but because they begin to tremble as the words begin to unearth from the depths of wherever this gift of writing grew from.
I struggle like anyone else…and my struggles, despite the years of revelations and learning, are so real to me and they hit just as hard as they used to.
In life, there are no shortcuts to anything worth having.
In fact, when you travel down that road you end up finding that there are more paths to be walked upon than you originally thought.
You find that same reality when you put yourself out there for matters of the heart as well. For me, it is almost impossible to judge others on decisions they make with their heart regarding others because I understand how complicated that part of our lives are.
Sometimes, as much as we want to help we have to others live and learn on their own journey so that they truly understand the value of what it is that has happened to them.
In 25 years young, but in many ways I feel 25 years old.
I feel like my life from the get-go has been an open floodgate of experience that has either been conducted through my own search or sprung upon me by the slyness of life itself.
Those experiences were dreaded and changed me 10 ways to Sunday often. They shaped, molded, and cracked pieces of me. But they never broke me. In fact, they taught me some of the more important lessons of my life – to always love deeply, to lead with your heart but never to forget your head, to dream as wildly as you can and to know your worth.
These lessons turned me into something today that I couldn’t possibly have recognized all those years ago.
Or maybe, and I say maybe because I can’t remember that far back, this man right here today, was a dream from all those years ago…from a struggling boy who despite the hell he was trapped in had a dream of becoming something else.
2015 stands as a promise.
A promise of not only a new year full of possibility, but also as a testament to the foundation that has been built over the past four years this February.
It’s time to start building the house. It’s time to take the dreams that were once only seen in my sleep out into the light and create them.
The sacrifices I have made to get to this point, yes, were instrumental in building the foundation – but now, I understand fully that there will be many more.
Many won’t be able to see the end in what I am doing, there will be long days and long nights, there will be certain opportunities missed, but I see it.
I see the end.
To me, that end becomes clearer and clearer every single day that I put down that foundation.
As I think more and more about these past two years…I might have spent a little more time than was necessary making sure that my structure was solid beneath me.
Having had everything fall apart once, I think I wanted to make sure that if the walls came down, I would at least have something to build upon again.
There’s always that chance – and I fully understand that now.
That’s the part about risking it all. Can you risk everything to gain something that demands your best?
That foundation is built.
It’s time to build.
Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project