I think as time has gone on, I’ve come to understand that life is naturally a bit messy.
People are complicated. Feelings are ever-shifting and the fluid nature of everything becomes more and more apparent.
This puts me in a tricky place. Well, maybe I should say a new place. As a man who has believed for the longest of time that there are simple foundations and principles that should stand as a bedrock in my day-to-day life, I’ve come across the fact that this fluidity of everything that is really doesn’t allow for much place of creating any expectation whatsoever that those same principles will not be honored by the rest of the shifting world.
I’ve come to a deep internal discussion with myself of what it is really like to live a life without attachment. To love and to let go at the same time. I found, and I’m sure that if I go back and read years worth of my own stories on this subject, that it has been letting go that has been the hardest thing for me to do.
And yet, by not being able to let go fully, it also restricts my ability to love deeply.
I’m in new waters again.
Waters that are forcing my perspective to change. Honestly, I find that my answer to this question that I’ve been holding for quite some time is going to be found in a deeper exploration of the reading that I am doing. Where does virtue fit in this world? As someone who believes in loving and respecting others deeply, where do I start creating my own personal boundaries and at the same time maintain this sense of peace that I am finding by going with the grain of where life wants to take me?
These are the questions that I’ve been working with.
At times I feel like I’m going a bit mad with them.
As the seasons change and winter comes to an end, I’m feeling this renewed sense of energy and many things are being cleaned out of my life. Maybe this is why the lesson of letting go continues to arise. There’s a sense of melancholy around this time as well as a deep excitement for what’s possible.
Leaving the harbor once again is a scary expedition. Leaving it in a completely new way offers the same thrill and sense of adventure that it did all those months ago.
I know in the depths of my heart that this is what I have to do in order to develop this contact with the finer layers of my soul. There are intricacies that exist in between the lines that are waiting to be discovered…a sense of magic…and a feeling of a “click.”
Now more than ever, things have had that feeling of clicking for me.
I’ve continued the settling of the raging fury in my blood and slowly ended my war with life. There are times when I pick up the armor once again and turn myself into stone in order to protect myself. However, slowly but surely, I let go of those defenses.
I’m discovering. I’m learning. I feel that I’m going to be saying those lines for the rest of my life as I continue to travel down this path. I also know that my greatest growth and journey will come in putting myself completely out there and rooting myself deep into the world – no matter where I am.
My disconnection with my truest self comes from trying to play a role that I think everyone else will like.
I’ve had to drop that mask as the years have gone on and stay true to what I know is right. It has taken a lot for me to get out of my own way and start to allow the child in me emerge again. To tell you the truth, it was scared to come out for a while because it felt that it would be judged harshly. Now, I know that it will in ways and it won’t in ways. That’s the reality of life. That’s the reality of being on the field playing in the game.
I know, without doubt, that I want to avoid sitting in the stands watching.
Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project