The Matrix - and The Struggle For Our Own Reality
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Young Boy: "Do not try and bend the spoon...instead, only try to realize the truth."
Neo: "What Truth?"
Young Boy: "There is no spoon. Then you'll see, it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself."
This scene from the movie, The Matrix, delivers one of the central revelations for Neo as he tries to come to terms with what The Matrix is, and why and how he needs to battle it.
It's a movie, and it's fiction, but when I watched the film almost two decades ago, I came away (as did many others, I'm sure) with a singular realization that the message of The Matrix was deeper and more relevant than perhaps we realize were we to take it at face value.
In many ways, the boy's message is an analogy for the way we choose to live our lives.
That the laws by which we tend to operate, the rules by which we live, the constructs that we regard as absolute facts, are, more often than not, abstractions that straitjacket our ability to flourish and realize our full potential.
That these rules were designed by someone at some point with an agenda. An agenda that doesn't necessarily align with ours, or represent our truth. An agenda that isn't necessarily going to guide us to the most fruitful, most productive path for us, ourselves.
That perhaps for us to excel, we need to break these rules, ignore them, exercise our own minds and create our own truths, and not the lies that the "machine" would program us to believe.
It means you don't have to look a particular way. Dress a particular way. Act in a particular way. It means you don't need to follow the same path others have before you. It means you don't have to abdicate your destiny to the lies of the machine.
It means that if we find that the current set of rules don't allow us to self actualize, then the problem may well be with the rules, and not with us.
It means that if we really, truly want to bend the spoon, we can. (And don't let the system tell you otherwise.)
Yes, you'll be called crazy, but only until you show you're right.
Then you'll be called a genius.
Yes, it's just a movie. But it's accurate.
Don't buy the old message. Don't get taken in by someone else's construct.
"Instead, only try to realize the truth."
