The Most Important Step A Man Can Take

If you’ve read Brandon Sanderson’s third installment of “The Stormlight Archives,” those words are not only familiar, but memorable. Impactful. Inspiring.

Especially for me.

Oathbringer

In 2024, I ventured for the first time into the Cosmere- the high fantasy universe of Brandon Sanderson. I started with the “Mistborn” trilogy and now I’m halfway through the five-book series of “The Stormlight Archives.”

It’s possible I’m a little late to the party, but I have never read anything like it. The world building is intense and incomparable. The magic systems are fascinating and original. But most of all, the characters and their journeys are powerful and relatable. Brandon Sanderson knows how to tell a hell of a story.

I’ll admit I was hesitant to rove into these books initially because I had been warned of their intensity and vastness. But I’m a reader, I enjoy a good story, and I was sure I could handle it. Or so I said to myself. And more than anything I trusted my Sanderson advisor and navigator and took her at her word that the experience, the commitment, and the journey would be worth it.

After all, journey before destination, right?

Without spoiling any plot points, I’ll simply state that one of the titular characters of “Oathbringer,” Dalinar Kholin, is struggling with a lot of pain from his past. Pain that he caused from difficult choices he made and has been tormented with for years. This pain seems to be more than he can bear, and he is not sure he can live with it. To dull the pain, he looses himself in the thrill of war and the drink.

He’s a soldier, a warrior, a leader. He’s a friend, a husband, a father. He bears an enormous responsibility for uniting the world in which he lives. And he is haunted and tortured by his past. He believes that his past, his pain, will always get in the way of who he is and what he is meant to accomplish.

So at one pivotal point in the story, he is offered an opportunity to have his pain removed. To have someone else bear the thing that is holding him back. To allow him to become who he is destined to become. All he has to do is succumb to the offer to give that pain to someone else, and it will all go away. He’ll be free of it.

He courageously refuses. He declares that his pain is his, and nobody else can have it.

This is I believe the culminating statement statement and message of the book:

“A journey will have pain and failure. It is not only the steps forward that we must accept. It is the stumbles. The trials. The knowledge that we will fail. That we will hurt those around us. But if we stop, if we accept the person we are when we fall, the journey ends. That failure becomes our destination. To love the journey is to accept no such end. I have found, through painful experience, that the most important step a person can take is always the next one.”

It’s difficult to put into words the effect that this statement, and this story, has had on me. But here I am giving it a try.

Unemployment

2024 was a tough year for me. While I’m always someone who tends to look on the bright side and squint my eyes through the mists of pain around me in search of a silver lining, I’ll admit that last year, perhaps more than I ever have before, my squinted eyes closed on more than one occasion and those silver linings just weren’t bright enough to see.

The resulting inner turmoil and pain, while not literally relatable to Dalinar Khonlin’s experience of war and nobility, was enough for me to also question my own purpose, fulfillment, and sense of accomplishment.

At the beginning of 2024, we decided to move. There were certain needs and struggles we were experiencing as a family, and we felt impressed, inspired even, to pick up, move, and settle in a new place. Up until then, I had a great job and career path that was very promising, exciting, and fulfilling. I may not have always loved my job, but I felt valued, needed, and more importantly I felt I was fulfilling my duty as a father to provide for my family, something that has always brought me great happiness. Caring for my family is and has always been my number one priority.

Not long after we moved to a new area, we bought a house, we got settled, and we were feeling pretty good about things, aaaaand… then I found myself for the first time in my life…

…unemployed.

One of my greatest fears was realized. My principal role of being able to provide for my family was now in jeopardy.

I spent a lot of last year unemployed, and it was not a good feeling. Now I’ll be the first to tell anyone that there are more important things than money, and it’s true, but when you suddenly have zero income, money all of a sudden becomes extremely important. It becomes what you think about constantly. You start dreaming up creative ways to earn money. You start wondering why you ever spent any money ever on anything. And you start worrying as you watch your savings account start to dwindle and die an unexpected and pitiful quick death.

Loss of Purpose

But more important than the money, I felt I had lost my purpose. I am the provider. I have a family to care for. They depend on me, and all of a sudden I was undependable. Who was I as a father and a husband if I wasn’t taking care of the essential needs of my family? I had hung so much weight of my self-worth on being able to provide them, and now that worth was financially and figuratively, less.

I know there are many out there who have suffered through unemployment longer that I have, and perhaps on multiple occasions. For me, this was my first time. It was a new experience. And for a while, I was at a loss. I was naive and thought I would snag another job easily in a few weeks time. I took a lot of first steps, mainly hundreds of job applications. However, one month and a few interviews later, nothing came of it. It was very discouraging. I was dedicating nearly all of my time to job hunting. And I hated being home in the middle of the day on a weekday. There was just something off about that. I didn’t belong there, like a puzzle piece in the wrong box.

But I wasn’t going to just sit around. I couldn’t. I had to continue to take the next steps. More job applications, working on my side business, working temp jobs here and there, and even Door Dash. We entered what many have called, survivor mode.

Journey Before Destination

Now I’d love to say that after so much time, after all those next steps, it all worked out, I’ve got a great job now and everything’s great! But this isn’t that kind of story. And it’s also kind of the point.

Perhaps I used to have the mindset that if I could just accomplish X or achieve Y, that I’d reach this euphoric landing place in life where pain subdues, failure doesn’t exist, feelings of worthlessness would be gone, and happiness glows in abundance. That this seemingly miserable journey would be over and I could enjoy the carefree bliss of this distant bright destination. And once I got there, I could ultimately, finally, enjoy life.

It’s a lie. It’s always been a lie. No such place exists, at least not in this life, and I suspect as well in the life to come.

Journey before destination. There’s an eternal principle in there.

I have felt like a failure on so many levels over the past year. That failure has brought pain and a lot of it. But it’s my pain. Nobody can have it. I need it. It’s my fuel to keep going. I take great comfort in the worlds of Dalinar Kholin: “But if we stop, if we accept the person we are when we fall, the journey ends. That failure becomes our destination.”

I don’t accept that. I CAN’T accept that. I may not have the weight of an entire kingdom on my shoulders, but I’ve got something better, something more motivating for me: A family who means everything in the world to me.

I’m still in the thick of it. It’s still painful. It’s not over. But it will never be over. One year from now, five years from now, or twenty years from now, there will be different painful experiences and always a next step to take.

And the most important step I can take is always the next one.