There Is No Magic Pill
"This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill... You stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes."
"This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill... You stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes." - Morpheus, "The Matrix"
I don't have enough fingers to count the number of times I've wanted desperately to take that blue pill. It's often cited that the blue pill represents the blissful ignorance of illusion. Childlike. You know the feeling where you wake up in a cold room but you're wrapped up in a warm blanket and you don't want to leave your bed? I would love that. I'd probably take that pill. Because startups are hard.
The red pill on the other hand represents knowledge, freedom, and the brutal truth of reality. This is where I've been living day in and day out. A million things coming at me all at once. I didn't get my workout in. I didn't start that project I need to start. There isn't enough money to hire someone. I don't spend enough time with the kids. My personal hygene is... suffering. This is my reality.
But there is some salvation. And for me it's the Matrix's concept of the spoon. Neo goes to see a child bending spoons with his mind. He is upset because he can't bend the spoons with his mind like the child can. Then he reveals his secret:
"Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead, only realize the truth: there is no spoon. Then you will see that it not the spoon that bends, it is yourself."
Change, just like that spoon, is hard. Only when a person changes himself can he change reality. It doesn't happen overnight and it won't happen if you don't do something about it. Start today. Sure you have to want it. But wanting it isn't enough. Do. The work. The repititions. No one, and I mean no one, will do it for you. Just do.
(I needed a kick in the ass today, so if you're reading this know that it's not really for you. It's for me. If you take nothing else away from this, it's that there is no spoon.)