Which also sounds like Descartes problem in Meditations on First Philosophy. How do I know that I am not just dreaming? That I am not a fool imagining all this in my mind? How do I know that I am not being deceived? And a more fundamental question: of what can I be certain about? Where can I find the ground of certitude?

In the film, the question of truth and the presuppositions that go with it were presented as a choice: the red pill or the blue pill. A choice between actual reality and the illusion of the Matrix. Cypher, the villain, chose illusion. Neo, the main character, chose actual reality. Neo’s choice, of course, is what the film upholds.

Notice that the choice of Neo hinged on an experience of searching. Neo was already searching for a long time, feeling some kind of dis-ease, “knowing” vaguely that there must be something more to the world he is experiencing at the moment. The choice of Neo hinged on a perception that there is truth out there and truth--if it is to be truth at all--must be sought and found.

As Morpheus would describe it, “You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.” There were moments of doubt and skepticism, but his curiosity about the possibility of finding “the truth”, as well as that gnawing feeling led him to Morpheus.

Hume would say that you can know the difference between fiction and reality; and how do you know? Well, you just know that there is a difference. Reality comes to you more vividly, more forcibly, and in a more lively fashion than fiction and imagination.

The Matrix of course makes it a little more complicated than Hume’s explanation. The Matrix is such that you’re never really sure you’re living in a world of illusions until you take the red pill and see the real world with your own eyes. You feel the angst, and the gnawing feeling that something is not right, that there ought to be more, but you’re never sure, until you are dis-illusioned and taken out of the Matrix. In the meantime, everything is deception, a mask, a lie.

In a sense, this experience of un-ease and angst, the feelings of discontent, disillusionment, and that there must be more to life than what I am experiencing right now is an archetypical experience. We are almost sure that what happens next is a dis-covering of truth, the un-earthing of meaning.

As Thomas Kuhn would describe it, there is a period when what you previously held as true can no longer answer present and pressing problems, and so you try to look for answers elsewhere. There is a growing sense of exasperation and discontent. You grapple with new data, and try to fit it into your categories and your previous knowledge of things. And then, as in scientific and societal revolutions, the old gradually gives way to the new.

Sometimes, it is not really an all-out revolution. What happens is that a dialogue between old and new creates a new world for both of those involved in the dialogue. A fusion of horizons happen. There is a fusion of horizons precisely because the participants in the dialogue come into it bringing with them their contexts and situations. And there is respect for what the other brings into the conversation. And, as in scientific or societal revolutions, the hope is that answers are found somewhere and a deeper, more improved way of living is reached.

Yet the path to truth and meaning is never easy. Truth hurts. Reality bites. That is why Cypher wanted to go back and be rewired to the Matrix—he got sick and tired of the real world. Also, Truth and Meaning is never a one shot deal—the red pill does not mean all problems are solved and life becomes easy. Truth and consequently, meaning, is the beginning of a long journey, because when you know, you cannot help but keep searching. When you know, you cannot help, but fight for what you know. What gives you meaning then defines who you are.

The Matrix then is also like the search for vocation. Life is such that when you’re living comfortably, when nothing bad is happening, when you’re not angry enough, you also never really find your place under the sun, precisely because you’re really not looking for your place under the sun! You do not feel a pressing need.

So that people with angst are usually those who find their vocations first. This is partly because the other side of fear is desire. The other side of angst is passion. And usually, you can find your passion and your desire only when you go through your fear and your angst. When you do not feel things are going your way, when you feel shitty, and confused, and empty, only then do you begin asking questions. Only then do you begin looking for stability. Only then do you realize your passion.

At first, you might get sidetracked and you might try to escape—sex, drugs, alcohol. But then you realize, you end up more shitty, and more confused and even more empty. What is needed is an honest-to-goodness appraisal of self. A re-evaluation of life. A reassessment of commitments.

You start looking for truth, which is the same way as saying you start looking for who you are. But it is never a one-shot deal. In graced moments, things are very clear and choices are made, and commitments are given—you decide to enter the Society of Jesus, or to take Perpetual Vows, or to propose to “the one”, or to say “till death do us part”. In even-more-graced-moments, things are not so clear and we are afraid—but somehow find the strength to continue and not renege on promises made when things were clearer. It is during those moments of fear, probably even more than those moments of clarity that we begin to see who we really are, and the stuff we are made of. Then we realize it is never really just up to us. Then we realize we have come full circle—we have searched for truth outside, and we have found ourselves. The search for truth is a search for meaning. Neo searched for truth; then found out what it is to be The One.

Finding yourself (a clarification of your identity) then colors subsequent dialogue. Dialogue brings you to a clarification of your identity—you become more clear about your stance; and at the same time, being clear about your stance allows you to bring something more profound into the dialogue. Neo—as The One—can now enter into the Matrix with more clarity and purpose.

In the film, the search for truth did not end with the taking of the red pill; it continued as periodical journeys in the Matrix—to meet the Oracle, to fight the Agents, to rescue Morpheus, and at the end of the film, to call people with the same angst and fears. Truth is never a one-shot deal because truth is a journey.

This theme of journey is very important to recover in our world today. Today, more emphasis and importance is placed on the destination, rather than the journey; on the results rather than the process. In business for example, companies generally care more about market margins than values. Product managers are at the mercy of product surveys, and employment, reputation—not to mention values—become as fluid as the movement of the product market margins. In politics, we have a similar case of the politician being under the mercy of pulse ratings; and so we have politicians being shown on tv and on the newspapers helping people. Being shown helping people, and we wonder if they do help when there are no more tv crew and media men around. Our environment today is so, because of the impatience on process and the insistence on results. Even in academics, the grade is the grade by which everything, it seems, is measured. And so, students cheat, and cut corners, and plagiarize; to pass perhaps, but horror of horrors, sometimes, to get honors. And we wonder what honor is there in cheating and cutting corners.

The journey is important because when you journey you discover things along the way, about yourself and about the world that you never would have discovered if you did not have the courage to set out in the first place.

And yet, the destination is important as well. In Paolo Coelho’s book The Alchemist, the journey counts as much as the treasure at its end. The treasure is in fact, the culmination of the journey. The book says, “You also have to find the treasure so that everyting you have learned along the way can make sense.” The treasure is the thing arrived at because the journey has been fruitful and well-made. Finding out that he was indeed The One made all the angst and the passion and the dis-ease make sense. But the point is that the journey could not, and should not be sacrificed. The point is that the treasure, if it is to be real treasure, should (along with its cousins must, and needs and have to, and ought to) include a journey. If we are to reclaim our values and our lives, we need to recover the journey and all it signifies.

Every journey begins with a desire: a dream perhaps, or probably an engagement into the possibilities and the impossibilities of life. A Dream is such precisely because it is not easy to real-ize. It has to gestate, to grow within your heart, to become a desire that pushes you to decisions and to action. The problem is that sometimes even the dream and the desire is difficult to identify. People are not sure about their dreams and so they’re not sure about their lives. The media has become so skilled at telling us what to desire; and so we lose focus on our own desires and our own dreams. And so we stay in illusion, and choose the easy way, and cut corners.

To choose the journey means that life will not be easier. It will indeed become more difficult. But there is happiness when you are keen enough to find it. There is happiness in the fact that you did not cut corners, or cheat. There is happiness because somehow there are graced moments—moments when things become clear to you and you take hold of, in one brief moment, the meaning of your life; and things just fall into place. And you know, even without the embellishment of words, why you are here, and why you are alive at all.