For some time now, I’ve been thinking about this idea of being on a path.
That sounds pretty mundane, but I’ve been taking it through the depths and really trying to understand this idea of journey.
This path I am on, it is ever-changing…tough at times…scary as all hell at moments and truly something that is forcing me to grow. I put myself in this position. I put myself here because I Knew I had hit a huge plateau and needed to take things in a different direction to be truly happy with my life. I had stopped growing and was loosing my sense of umphhh.
So, here I am.
I think there’s a misconception about taking steps backward. This is what I’ve really been thinking of.
There’s some idea that on your path of life, there are steps forward and steps backward. If you make a mistake, you head in the wrong direction – backwards – on your path. If you make the right choice, you head in the forward direction. But this all seems pretty odd to me. How can you go backwards? Because by taking an action, you’re already moving forwards. You’ve decided to do something – for better or for worse – and you are going to be changed by it no matter what. You can’t go back from making that choice – back to the person you were before. You have essentially grown no matter what choice you made.
I’m not saying that there aren’t choices that have consequences – there are – sometimes horrible ones.
But as tough as that choice was – or as horrible as that outcome was – you’ve still moved forward through the story. If you thought of it like a book…you turn the page to the next piece of the story. You can’t turn 50 pages back and start from there because the protagonist made a bad choice. That would be the most confusing book in the world.
It’s all part of the journey.
It’s all part of moving forward in life.
You can’t go back. You can’t change the past.
All you can do is continue moving forward on your path and make better decisions in the future. But it’s all forward movement. It’s all part of the story. It’s all a gift.
Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project
Evan you are awesome!
Awesome man. I’m actually on the same path with moving from my comfy bubble in Southern California, to Oregon for new adventures. It’s frightening but it’s going to be way worthat at then of the journey.
Cheers,