Not the Spoon that Bends
"What are you waiting for? You're faster than this. Don't think you are, know you are.”
The Matrix (1999)
At a recent lunch with my work teammates, I went down a tangent of conversation about mastering skills in proposal related topics like InDesign, graphic design, and other skills that I generally use at my job everyday. I summarized that when you get really good at creating proposals there are a lot of parts and pieces that you just execute without thinking about it, because you’ve been doing it for so long that your experience just kicks in. So to further illustrate this, I referenced the final scenes of the Matrix where Neo can stop time and space and change the code of the program to his will. And he does this subconsciously, without thinking, as most superheroes use their powers.
I’m not saying that marketers are superheroes (who am I kidding, I am totally saying that) but the path to becoming a greatly skilled and experienced marketer, a master-marketer if you will, does involve the learning and training of several skills and elements. And mastery of a skill, any skill, involves its own journey very similar if not equal to the journey that Neo undertakes in the Matrix. As he learns, just knowing how isn’t enough, it’s more difficult but just as necessary to know that you can achieve mastery.
The Review
Thomas Anderson is a cubicle jockey at a software tech firm by day, and a hacker by night. With his handle “Neo” he provides questionable tech services for underground types when he is contacted by a mysterious stranger on his computer. The stranger tells him to follow the white rabbit, a tattoo he sees on a girl in his client’s envoy, so he joins them at a nightclub. There he meets Trinity, another hacker who has been searching for him to warn him he is in danger. She offers to take him to meet Morpheus, a mysterious figure, a rebel leader, who has a broad but dark reputation. Neo is intrigued because he knows Morpheus has the answers to what he asks - What is the Matrix?
After a clandestine encounter with unknown authorities at his work, who implant a tracking device bug in his stomach in the eeriest of ways, he makes contact with Trinity to seek out Morpheus. WHen they do meet, Morpheus explains to him that the world Neo knows is a facade, a program created by machines and their AI to grow and harvest humans for energy, and that the Matrix is the program designed to keep them docile and complacent. A kind of mental slavery, Morpheus and his rebel crew are the few humans left at a place called Zion who work to fight it and protect what’s left of humanity. Morpheus has been looking for Neo because he is prophesied to be the One who can stop the machines and save them all.
Neo isn’t buying Morpheus’s story so easily so Morpheus offers him the choice of breaking out of his enslavement by offering him either a red pill or a blue pill - one which will keep him asleep and existing in the Matrix, and the other which will wake him up to join the resistance to the machines’ slavery. Neo chooses the red pill and wakes up to a frightening dystopian world where humans and machines fought a war to the near destruction of the Earth itself.
The prophecy comes from an entity called the Oracle, whom Neo must see to learn what he needs to know to become the One, along with coaching and training from Morpheus to utilize his abilities within the Matrix to fight the agents secretly ruling society. It is also revealed that among the crewmembers of Morpheus’ ship the Nebuchadnezzar, there is a traitor in their midst that would give up Morpheus and his access to Zion to re-enter the Matrix and side with the machines.
Neo undertakes a journey of self-discovery, training, and awakening to the truth to learn his part in the greater battle between man and machine. He struggles to believe in himself and in his destiny as the savior of humanity but if he does not, humanity could be forever doomed to slavery as an energy source for the machines.
The Take
It is said that the journey to mastery begins with a single step. Eventually, the path to mastery contains steps up mountains and down valleys, and often ends out of breath with tired legs. On the contrary, I have learned that the path to mastery actually begins with believing that the first step is not only possible but worth taking. And at the end of the journey to mastery involves taking no steps at all.
Cryptic I know, and I learned this lesson in 1999 at the dawn of the technical age on the cusp of the new millennium, as we sat in a dark theater waiting to learn the answer to the question we had for over a year - What is the Matrix? There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that this film was revolutionary in its technicality and its philosophy. The visual style was unmatched for its time, bringing to life the masterful art style only seen before in anime films like Akira and Ghost in the Shell. It delivered on technical concepts inspired by Cyberpunk sci-fi only brushed upon in previous films like Tron, The Lawnmower Man, and Johnny Mnemonic. Primarily, The Matrix gave us a fresh take on Joseph Cambell’s Hero’s Journey, the classic story arc of a mythical hero with royal origins that is destined to save the world, with his enhanced skills, special tools, and a sage-minded guide to get him there.
Sound familiar? It should, you’ve seen the story before, in the Greek myth of Jason, Arthur of Camelot, Star Wars, etc. Where The Matrix diverges from this classic story arc is in the shortcuts it does and doesn’t take. True, Neo is “the Chosen One”, he has special gifts, talents, mythic origins (later revealed in the sequel) and Morpheus as his guide. His required skills are uploaded into his consciousness, reducing the time it takes for him to learn the needed skills to fight and overcome (also a time mechanism to move the plot along). Where the Wachiowskis had really excelled in their character development of Neo is how they avoided the truncated development of his self-belief - a crucial element of the mental mastery of his new skills in this newfound situation. Morpheus as his guide is doing his best not only to explain the truth but coach Neo on his part in the battles to come and his destiny to save Zion. Neo isn’t sure that he can totally trust what Morpheus is coaching him on though, and this infamous exchange occurs between them:
Neo: What are you trying to tell me? That I can dodge bullets?
Morpheus: No, Neo. I'm trying to tell you that when you're ready, you won't have to.
No really, this line left me with chills and still does to this day.
Essentially Neo learns martial arts skills in a matter of hours, maybe less than a day. It takes the course of the entire film for him to truly believe that those skills are under his complete control. In the first act Neo has to learn and believe that another path from his tedious boring life is possible. He learns of its existence through the guidance of Trinity and Morpheus but still has to choose to believe it. The choice to believe in this other path to mastery is presented to him several times: through the choice to get in the car with Trinity, Apoc, and Switch to meet Morpheus, the presentation of choosing either the Red or Blue Pill, the choice to open the door to the Oracle’s domain, in fact choice is a prevalent theme throughout the film. The choice is always presented to Neo and it’s up to him to choose the next step of his path. Morpheus himself tells Neo
“I'm trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it.”
I think what the story is teaching us, in addition to the responsibility of choice, is that the path to mastery must be chosen. Bodybuilders choose to show up at the gym to work out, doctoral candidates choose to study and work late hours, and us marketers choose to take on a life of stress and deadlines for the win and for the greater industry. Whatever skill you choose to learn, whatever career you choose to undertake, you make the choice to wake up every day and work towards mastering it. Morpheus summarizes this perfectly by telling Neo
“There is a difference between knowing the path, and walking the path.”
Knowing the path is only the first step on the path to mastery, knowledge of skills and of the self are second and third. Techniques and how-to training are easy enough to source through countless methods, especially in our AEC industry, knowledge of the self becomes a bit more complicated. By the second act of the film, Neo is training with Morpheus when Morpheus notes: “Adaptation and improvisation but your weakness is not your technique.” This tells us that there is more to Neo’s learning journey than just knowing the moves, there is a deeper element to discover.
At their visit to the Oracle in her apartment, she tells Neo of a plaque on the wall that reads “temet nosce”, roughly translated from Latin for “know thyself”. This phrase was inscribed at temple of the Oracle at Delphi in Ancient Greece, and it always struck me as profoundly significant. Nothing can be mastered without knowing your own strengths and weaknesses, or your own passions and skills. I don’t blame companies for having their employees take those annoyingly popular personality assessments, although I don’t always believe that they are used for the most effective purposes either. Self discovery can be a lifelong process and I don’t think that assessments which quickly summarize your traits tell a complete story. Ultimately the story, the journey, and the choice to believe as such are yours alone.
“Temet Nosce” can branch into countless things to be understood, my recent experience involves knowing not only your strengths and weaknesses but knowing where you want your path to lead. I recently had an opportunity arise that would lead to a better paying position and a promotion. I turned it down because I simply did not want it. I told the offerors that I appreciate the respect and consideration but I know who I am and I know what I want, and this opportunity was not on . It may seem crazy to turn down such an offer but I made the choice based on what I had learned about myself over the course of my career. I chose to stay on my current path because I know myself.
By the third act of the film, Neo makes a choice to defy the Oracle and save Morpheus, and this is really where he begins to believe in his own destiny. This pivot is crucial because, as he mirrors many of us mundanes in our everyday lives, he has others to believe in him and his possibilities but it’s useless until he believes in himself. It is the hardest mindset to master. Morpheus had laid the foundation for this change of heart in their first (and now legendary) sparring scene, when he yells at Neo
“What are you waiting for? You're faster than this. Don't think you are, know you are. Come on. Stop trying to hit me and hit me!”
When there is a possibility to save others, Neo begins to believe that he can help, he can make a difference, and he’ll risk everything to try. I think what really unlocked his belief potential to pull this off, building on the foundation of Morpheus’ words, was his interaction with the child at the Oracle’s apartment, who famously tells him
“Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth. There is no spoon. Then you'll see that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.”
What I love about this interaction in the film and its relation to skill mastery is the basic understanding that the power to change your state is yours alone, and no mastery of skill occurs until you come to this realization. When he finally does, he saves Morpheus, defeats the agents, saves Trinity, and gives us the infamous “bullet time” scene that changed cinema forever.
Neo isn’t done there however. When he gets Morpheus and Trinity to safety, and ends up on the run from agents. Instead of running away he chooses to stand and face the agents, when Morpheus tells Trinity “He's beginning to believe.” Neo is nearly killed when Trinity spiritually revives him by saying that she loves him (cheesy I know but more meta than you think) he is then finally ready to embrace his strength and power and counter-attack the agents. Now he knows there is no spoon, he knows himself, his weakness is not his technique, he’s walking the path and he’s beginning to believe! When he manipulates the Matrix by literally stopping bullets mid-air he feels the truth of Morpheus’ words - “when the time comes you won’t have to.”
Musashi Miyamoto, author of “Book of Five Rings” includes an explanation in the final segment of his book, “Book of the Void”. It has been interpreted in many ways, as an esoteric vague explanation, through a filter of Zen philosophy, a doorway to enlightenment, etc. I think through the path of mastery “the Book of Void” can be interpreted as that which you execute without thinking. When a skill is so practiced that it can be executed without the conscious pensive thought of it, it is mastered. The belief of executing this said skill is so innate that it ceases to exist and only the act remains. In cinema this is shown in countless martial arts films, and this one is no exception. When Neo fights the agents in what looks like slow motion, with one arm behind his back (love this scene) he doesn’t need to think about it, or try to believe it, it’s just happening as a natural reaction to their attacks. It’s a great visual example of skill mastery and the culmination of his path to believing he is the one. This is what Morpheus worked to coach him towards “Stop trying to hit me and hit me.”
The formula for this film was developed long ago through samurai and martial arts films since the 1950s with the apprentice that seeks to become the master of said technique/style/skill. And as Joseph Cambell literary scholars could argue, the foundation is even older than that. What this means for your career path, and mine, is that there are many steps and stops along the path you choose to skill mastery but only if you choose to believe, as Neo did. And you’re going to learn a lot about yourself along the way. Most importantly you’re going to learn to get back up and believe in yourself. And no matter what you choose to excel at in life, you’re going to realize that there is no spoon and it’s not the spoon that moves, but yourself. What are you waiting for?
