Feb 26 2009
Know the Path
Written and directed by the Wachowski brothers, The Matrix (1999) was the first in a trilogy of movies that brought out the inner geek in even the cool people. The premise is simple: We live in a dreamworld created by computers in order to keep the human race enslaved. Only Keanu Reeves - playing the character Neo - can save us.
For anyone who saw the episode of South Park where the forces of good and evil were fighting and the good guys kept saying Kenny was their Keanu Reeves, this is the role to which they were referring - not to be confused with his role of Quantico Punk Johnny Utah in Point Break.
So what’s going on here? Am I doing a movie review? Simple answer…no. I actually did my final research project for a college film class on The Matrix where I drew parallels between it and The Wizard of OZ. (Maybe I’ll tell you about them at some point…but not yet.)
What I’d like to do today is get back to my blogging roots - the reason I created this blog in the first place - and pull out the message from this Hollywood blockbuster.
In the movie, there’s a lot of discussion about whether Neo is “the one” who is prophesied to free the humans from bondage. (For anyone who’s not seen this yet, clicking on the photo will take you to a good deal I found on the DVD.) Neo undergoes a number of tests and even sees the Oracle in an attempt to answer this question. In one of the most powerful scenes of the movie, Morpheus - played by Laurence Fishburne - turns to Neo and says, “There’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.”
Seriously…were truer words ever spoken?
Think about it. For the most part, we know what it takes to be good people. We know we should be more socially-conscious; work toward a better world. But do we act on it? We know kindness towards others is the basis of a peaceful society.
Yet do we act in kindness to the moron who just cut us off in traffic?
You see, while we know right where to find the path, we seem to have a tough time treading upon it. Too tough, perhaps. So maybe we don’t know the path as well as we think we do.
Consider this: If the path you know is one that is self-defeating then the reason why we fail to walk the path of goodness is because we don’t know how to find it anymore. I mean, if we’re all on the path where we know the good we do in the world won’t make a difference then it becomes an exercise in futility to even try.
How about this: We stop knowing the path and we just start walking it. What would happen if we stopped knowing we couldn’t make a difference in the world and we just started making the difference? Eventually, the path we walk would become the path we know.
So…What do you think? Are you ready to get your feet on the street and start making your own path?
Or are you content to continue on in a society that supports inaction and champions mediocrity?
You tell me.
Jen
“The difference? I make sarcasm look good.”
