One step.
That’s all it takes.
That single step may become the greatest step you’ll take in your entire life. I don’t believe that journey’s are necessarily planned for you ahead of time. Some may call that destiny or fate. I do believe that we have an ability to choose which path we go down and from there our lives begin to unfold.
I’ve traveled many paths in this young life of mine.
I’ve traveled into places I knew I shouldn’t go. I’ve made tragic errors and mistakes. I’ve lived in the darkness and then stumbled my way into the light. I’ve backtracked and relapsed.
And yet there’s one universal truth that continues to remain.
At any moment, you can choose a new way. It may not be easy. It may challenge you down to the foundation of who you are. But that’s your choice.
When we don’t make that choice, most of the time it’s because we are afraid of the potential or known consequences. We avoid the temporary pain but completely rid ourselves of the opportunity to become something greater in the future.
I’ve been in this place many times. I knew what I had to do and avoided making that decision because everything was “okay” in the present. But when you know that somethings going to create a good deal of conflict in you in the future, well, then it’s all as good as broken.
Avoiding doing what you know is right is actually something that causes heart-splitting suffering.
You’re going against what you know is right. The amount of internal and external pressure that will consume you until you make the decision is enormous. These moments where I have felt this type of pressure have burdened me more than I could ever express in words. And when you start to crack, the demons come out to play to finish the job off properly.
It doesn’t have to get to that point.
But you will have to step into the unknown and let go of the things that aren’t for you in this world.
The art of letting go and loving are very similar. In each, you do not yearn to possess and you allow life to unfold as it should.
One can teach you the other. In a world that’s ever changing and shifting, they are one of the same. It’s not about refusing to give yourself. It’s about understanding that the dynamics of a fluid world are that it is indeed fluid and subject to change at any moment.
That can be a tough pill to swallow as we come across the realization that there are things in this life that we cannot avoid. We will grow old and eventually die. We do not get to keep our things. All relationships will pass.
Undeniable realities.
But when you truly sit in this, and you get a sense for what ultimately fulfills you as a human being, it becomes apparent that the deeper aspects of life – learning to unconditionally love and give yourself – become even more important. While there seems to be a natural deterioration of all things that are physical in this world, it also becomes clear that the way you make other people feel and the love you give in this life seem to transcend both space and time.
That makes it all worth it.
Because there’s nothing like the feeling in your soul when you are living in your fullest…and that rarely comes along with you achieving gaining things. It seems to come along with life happening while you’re in your fullest expression of who you are as a human being.
All of this unfolding takes a single step.
One step.
That step can determine where you go from here. That step can lead you down a path of love or hate. In many respects, it’s not a completely “all or nothing” choice. If you don’t get too lost, you can change paths and head into different places. You can crawl through the brush and the thorns to get to a completely different path.
This all takes your choice.
What’s happening right now doesn’t necessarily mean that’s what is going to happen in the future. There’s always that fluidity to life if you give yourself the chance enough to be fluid within it.
You get to create that future.
That’s your choice.
The steps are yours to take.
Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project