It’s another new year. Like many other people, I’m taking stock and considering choices. Intention and action are the engine and wheels of personal change. This issue surfaced for me in the latest Matrix movie which I watched over the holidays. Without delving into the complex plot, the Matrix movies center around the idea of choice. Taking the Blue Pill keeps you “asleep” and trapped in the existing reality. Taking the Red Pill opens your eyes to what is really going on and puts you on the path to revolution and rebelling against the state of things. In the past, I have tended to opt for the Red Pill and the path of disruptive change. More recently I’ve started to wonder about an alternative – that of a Purple Pill.
Here the choice is the middle path between red and blue. Rather than try to overturn the current reality, you work to nudge it in a positive direction. We often want change to happen sooner, and there is indeed a lot of change that is desperately needed in the world. Change agents are impatient and unwilling to settle for marginal progress. George Bernard Shaw offered this perspective, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
A concern that change agents have is that in playing along with the establishment you get played by the establishment. The establishment has much vested in the status quo and maintaining the Blue Pill reality. Yet, the problem with the Red Pill path is that it entails a vicious fight as in the violent Matrix. Victory is elusive and the battle sparks a repeating loop of retribution. The Purple Pill offers no guarantee of success but it offers a steady and sustained path that cuts between good and bad, right and wrong.
In the short frame, the prevailing reality is often distressing and the pace of change seems frustrating. It is tempting to go all out and often flame out. Yet, when we zoom out, it is possible to see how much progress has been made in so many fields – from education to human rights to hunger – over time.
This choice is also in play with New Year’s resolutions. We start with a burst of intention and commitment but quit when we don’t see results as quickly as we might hope for. The literature on habits suggests small and sustained steps are a better bet for generating results. James Clear of Atomic Habits states: “You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results.” So here, the path here is neither taking the Blue Pill of complacency nor the Red Pill of urgency. The Purple Pill works slowly in small and sustained doses. Martin Luther King evoked this notion with the work of social justice. He said that “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.”
As I ponder the year ahead, I plan to take more of the Blue Pill in the new year and tuck the Red Pill back into the medicine cabinet. I hope to hold intention close and lean into committed action, and to do so with greater patience.
Sustained intention and action are expressed by L.R. Knost in this evocative reminder that we can travel light in the face of darkness:
“Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world. All things break. And all things can be mended. Not with time, as they say, but with intention. So go. Love intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally. The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is you.”