Red Pill or Blue Pill?

“You take the blue pill… the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill… you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” – Morpheus 

Imagine if you were given a choice of a blue pill or red pill.  If you choose the blue pill, neuroscientists will place your body inside of a float tank and place the most sophisticated VR headset ever created over your eyes.  Your life is now a full blown simulation bound only by your own thoughts and imagination. 

There is no scarcity, no work, no pain, no suffering, no uncertainty, no fear, no anxiety.  While people in the real world must still grind to bridge the gap between desire and reality, your world is void of any effort.  Thought and reality require no bridge to cross. Life is pure bliss.  Here’s the small print though.  Once you take the blue pill, you can’t un-take it.  Your decision is final. 

If you choose the red pill, you stay here. No headset. No simulation. Scarcity, work, pain, suffering, loss, uncertainty, fear, anxiety, all still exist. Closing the gap between what you want and where you are is going to require energy, effort, and time.   Reality is still just as hard and just as harsh as ever.  And you have the knowledge that there are people in the world who are living in a pain-free simulation that is always available to you.  

Which one would you choose? And more importantly why? 

The question is a tough one. A pain-free existence with everything I could ever imagine sounds pretty good. Travel, adventure, fun, a perfect body, eating whatever without consequence is a dream come true, right?  It would be so hard to turn that down especially as I get older and start to feel the wear and tear on my body.  But honestly, I’d have to go with the red pill. 

My answer can really only be explained in one word; connection.  Thinking about a life of simulation leaves a pit in my stomach. Something just isn’t quite right.  It’s like when you go to the zoo and see the manmade habitats the animals live in.  Sure, that poured concrete looks like real boulders and the water moving between them looks like a real stream but I know it’s fake, artificial, pseudo. 

There is a bond that exists between all living things.  A universal life force that flows through every person, plant, and animal on the planet.  The Greeks called it pneuma which means “breath,” “wind,” or “spirit,” and was used by Stoics to describe a “material” that fills the universe.  You can tell the difference between a real and fake tree. You can tell the difference between real and fake grass.  Even if they look the same, the simulated version always lacks that connection of life force energy.  

Given the same choice, I believe most people would also choose the red pill over the blue pill.  Our senses can be fooled, but they still know the difference between alive and simulated. We yearn for real.  But here’s the twist. What if we are already unknowingly choosing the blue pill?  What if we are simulating our lives using smart phones, social media, and scrolling?   

The average American spends approximately 5 hours per day on their phone, according to 2025-2026 reports.   This equates to roughly 2.5 months per year, with users checking their devices 186–205 times daily.   So if a person is given a phone at the age of 12 and lives until 75, they will spend 13 years of their life staring at a phone.  Think about how much life 13 years is. How much can be done, seen, shared, and experienced.   All of that will be missed and the worst part is the increase of isolation and disconnection that results from living the simulation of a screened-in life. 

This feeling of disconnection is the leading reason why I have recently blown up my entire coaching practice. I ended every single coaching relationship I had.  It took me two months to undo everything.  It wasn’t because I wasn’t helping people. It wasn’t because I wanted to do something else. It wasn’t because I didn’t like my clients.  I just felt so alone. 

Since then I’ve probably had a hundred people ask me what I’m going to do next.  My answer has remained the same. 

“I can’t tell you what I am going to do next but I can tell you what I’m not going to do. I’m not going to spend the next decade in an office by myself all day talking into a rectangle.”

If hospice nurse Bronnie Ware ever updates her best-selling book, The 5 Regrets of the Dying, she will add a sixth.  “I wish I hadn’t spent so much of my life staring at my phone.”  My hope in writing this is you and I won’t become one of those who dies with that regret on our hearts. 

live freed,
Jordan