There’s this moment in The Matrix that always stuck out to me and I never really understood why until recently. Morpheus looks at Neo and says, “There’s a difference between knowing the path, and walking the path.”
For a couple of years now, I’ve known the path. I’ve studied, learned, practiced and even from time to time really started to travel up on. But eventually, I always returned back to where I started. The comfortability of the struggles I had known was all too alluring and so I repeated an endless cycle countless amounts of times.
Coming back to this place over and over again was never where I was meant to stay. I learned over time that I arrived here because the roots of fear, mistrust and guilt had spread throughout parts of my foundation over the years. The fear of letting go of what I had known – even if I knew of a better place to be – was overriding my commitment in moving forward and experiencing unexplainable amounts of growth.
As much as my intuition told me to “let go”…I couldn’t. There were too many memories throughout the years that were replaying themselves in my mind that I just didn’t have the ability to make it happen.
But one by one, I started to yank out those ancient weeds and opened that space to be filled with something that I knew was good for me.
And that has led me here. Finally deciding to walk the path through and through.
Life isn’t linear in the way we think it is. We believe that because we count our age by some numerical quantity that we are moving on a straight line somehow.
But if I’ve learned anything, this is far from how it actually works. We grow, expand, and contract in ways we don’t often recognize. We start walking on paths, move in different directions, fall into unexplored areas and come back to where we need to be.
But the gift of all of this is understanding that the road to where you want to be is one of progression and not perfection. One of unfolding and constant learning. You’re never done.
All of it is about deeply honoring who you are, what your wisdom is telling you to do and the series of choices that will inevitably lead you to who you are meant to be.
Forward you go through fear.
Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project