What Helps Me Make Sense Of All Of This

I see myself in others very often.

Not in a way of knowing all of them, but in understanding the decisions they have made and how they got there.

Even if it hurts, I can understand. That doesn’t take away my pain – only I can do that and I have my ways of nourishing wounds – but it does help me bring some compassion in, as hard as that may be sometimes.

I can look back on everything I’ve been through, all of the writing I have done, all of the development that I’ve gone through and begin to see a place of where I was and where I am now. This helps me. This helps me because I realize that everyone has their own path and it is theirs to walk.

We each have paths of our own, and if we are lucky, we may walk that path with another for some time.

But like all things in this life, change has an upper hand on it all.

Everything is subject to movement and shifts. You may not like it. You may even hate it. But it’s going to happen and the things that actually has freed me from all of that anger is acceptance.

Acceptance that there are going to be some things that are completely out of control. If I’m honest with myself, most things are out of my control. There are a few things that I am in control of – following my passions, giving my best effort, and chasing after the dreams that have come across my path.

But everything else is really subject to the great mystery.

The only reason why I have suffered in the past is because I didn’t want to accept what was happening.

I wanted it to go back to the way it was.

I wanted it to stay that way because it’s never fun when things turn for the worse.

But they do sometimes. They change and there’s not much you can do in many cases about it. The only thing that you can do is adjust and keep moving forward.

The biggest adjustment I’ve made lately is changing my plans to move forward into the future in a different way. This came with a lot of thinking and feeling into what I felt like I was being told to do. I felt like it was time to adjust and come back home for a while to finish some things that I knew were meant for me. I didn’t want to leave them incomplete. I didn’t want to leave them unfinished.

I knew that if I did make my mark in the ways I felt like I wanted to, that I would feel fulfilled inside.

So how could I possibly refuse giving that gift to myself?

I couldn’t.

I believe in each of us there’s a wonderful capacity to continue to stay open despite how dark things get at times.

Life is going to challenge you in all sorts of ways and won’t let up on you until you learn the lesson. Isn’t that interesting? The same thing continues to happen over and over and over again until you finally learn and then it’s onto the next thing. Whatever force is at play knows whatever is good for us and gives it to us continuously.

It gives it to us because that’s the thing that we need in order to grow.

My story has been an interesting one thus far.

It’s been one of building back up from nothing, slipping and falling along the way, and starting to run into an open field.

I’ve had to work through barriers lately about what it means for me to charge forward into this world and make my mark. I can see what I have to do and to be honest there was fear around more exposure. But that’s how it is. You have to let your light shine in whatever way you are called to.

Let it shine or suffer the pain of regret.

I choose the light no matter how hard it may be at times.

I’m in good hands.

I’m being taken care of.

Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project