The 100-Year Walk

How failure can expose the path to enlightenment

We are here for a 100-year walk, give or take. Picture yourself on a perfectly flat sidewalk extending into the horizon for the entirety of your walk which represents your existence. The sidewalk is pristine—no cracks, no damage—just a long, even path stretching before you.

The walk is well-paced and pleasant enough. You can speed up or slow down, but it’s still 100 years of walking. There’s just one thing: every 10 steps, you take a faceplant onto the concrete. Nine good steps, then boom—nose to concrete.

It hurts. You get banged up. Still, you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and continue your walk… only to fall again.

The Struggle Against the Inevitable

Soon, you get tired of falling. You start deliberately watching your feet. You intensely scan every inch of sidewalk for signs of an impending fall. But again, every 10 steps, down you go, you fall flat on your face.

Frustration grows. Maybe you even become angry. The intellect—the human side of you—keeps trying to grasp for an understanding of something it can't seem to comprehend. So it does the only thing it knows how to do: measure, compare, and judge.

You start judging yourself—your legs, your shoes, your eyes, the sidewalk. But it doesn't change anything. You keep falling.

You spend an enormous amount of energy trying to analyze and “solve the problem" of falling every 10 steps. You develop theories and beliefs about why it keeps happening. You look at other people on their sidewalks, falling every 10 steps, and you think to yourself: 

What is going on? Why does this happen?

Eventually, you start talking to the heavens, desiring answers, desiring a different outcome, dreaming of the day you don’t fall, seeking utopia. Only to find that the heavens don’t give you any answers. So you continue judging yourself and the sidewalk. You harbor displeasure with your body, your mind, your spirit, your existence. You carry the judgement for so long that you forget you're even carrying it, and this state of judgment goes unrecognized, now feeling normal.

And the process continues. Every. Ten. Steps.

Your First Mistake

Can you remember your first serious mistake? 

The one where you caught yourself, said "oops," and felt it in your gut. Like you were going to get in trouble for something you weren't sure you were supposed to get in trouble for. Because after all, it was a mistake—not something you really "planned" to have happen.

Or was it?

What was that feeling in your stomach when you realized you'd made the mistake? If you thought it was fear, look deeper. It was judgment. Judgment comparing you to what the outcome would have been if the mistake hadn't happened.

Internally you gave yourself the proverbial slap on the hand and realized there would be repercussions to deal with. Maybe you felt like hiding under a rock. Maybe you staunchly denied the mistake to everyone, fearing more judgment from yourself and others.

How did you recover from it? Did you pretend the mistake didn't happen? Ignore the feeling? Pack it away inside as trauma, like a large rock you believe will someday dissolve? Maybe you dealt with it the best way you could by forgiving yourself.

But did you truly recover? Do you feel like you've recovered from that mistake and the many that came after it? 

Regardless, every 10 steps you make a mistake, you fall.

A Pattern of Judgement

Deep down, something remains unresolved—not because of the fall, but because of the judgment of the fall. The times you fall, your mistakes, keep happening for your entire walk, and so does the act of judgment. Over and over again without you realizing it.

No matter how many times you try to avoid mistakes or stay centered, you will trip and fall. The fall is on concrete. It hurts. It's messy - judgment, shame, concealment, tension. Until we learn the truth - it's built into the plan.

Two Halves

You can be explained as two halves—half human, half spiritual being. Both complete and intertwined in an existence that challenges even the strongest among us.

The intellectual, ego-driven side seeks desired outcomes through comparison of what it believes to be truth. The spiritual being within has a natural state of compassion, love, and acceptance.

When we fall, the human half is usually first to the scene. It's there to compare the fall to the prior nine steps and proudly declare: "We've fallen!" Then it immediately moves into investigative mode, tracking the reasons why we fell, only to conclude that it was a mistake and we are to blame. Judgment ensues.

The spiritual half of you sits as an observer, like a silent partner, watching you sleuth your way through cracking the case, watching you figuring out ways to make sure you never fall again.

It is in this constant state of walk-fall-judge-repeat that we begin to tell ourselves consciously or subconsciously that we are not complete. That we lack something. After all we keep falling. In turn we create and support a fabricated self built on the notion of “not being enough”.

But this couldn't be further from the truth.

Freedom in the Faceplants

The falls are not glitches. They are programmed into your existence. Designed. Tailored. Intentional. Sacred. Created to be the signals for understanding of what you truly are. Nothing is random in creation. There are no “mistakes” in your existence.

Why do we keep falling every 10 steps? Because you don’t have the choice to remember the love that you are in the ease of the walk. The choice to remember love is in the challenge of continuing the walk. The choice is to remember compassion in the moment you least want to give it to yourself and others. The sidewalk doesn’t change…you do. 

The spiritual half of you has a natural state that is unconditionally loving. The secret is found in recognizing judgment and choosing to love yourself for taking the fall. The fall is not a threat to your progress. It is your progress. The falls were never a trigger for judgment but an invitation to self-love, to remember you were always whole, always complete, never less. It is all planned. There is nothing to judge, ever, only to love.

Your existence cannot have perfection, but it can have love. The ultimate choice is self love in the face of self judgment.

The Red Carpet

Existence can feel bleak when described as "a drawn-out walk of 100 years, give or take." It may sound heavy because we view the walk through the lens of its difficulties—the suffering, the chaos, the judgment, embarrassment, the turbulence.

But the very things we resist about our existence are actually a secret to something deeper. A portal to understanding how creation interacts with us on a daily basis.

When you stop judging the fall and start recognizing it as part of your divine design, something shifts. The sidewalk transforms into a red carpet. You recognize your divinity. The gifts in the fall become obvious. And each stumble becomes an opportunity to practice what you truly are—unconditional love embodied in human form.

You're not walking towards perfection. You're walking towards remembering that you were always complete.

The 100-year walk isn't a punishment or a test. It’s the opportunity to love wrapped as a gift. It's a carefully designed experience where every fall—every single one—is a chance to choose love over judgment. To choose wholeness over the illusion of lack.

Conclusion

Every 10 steps, you will fall. Stop walking in fear of the tenth step.

There is not a single flaw in your life’s design. This is the design. Embrace the falls.

The question is not how to stop falling. The question is: when you fall, will you judge yourself, or will you love yourself?

That choice of love—repeated thousands of times across your 100-year walk—is the path to enlightenment. Not the absence of falling, but the presence of love in the midst of it. You were never here to walk perfectly.

The sidewalk has always been a red carpet. You just had to fall enough times to see it.