I’m a huge fan of The Matrix, especially when it comes to its take on choice. Early in the movie, Morpheus presents Neo with an irreversible decision: take the red pill and learn the truth about the Matrix, or take the blue pill and remain blissfully ignorant. For Neo, who has been searching for the truth about the Matrix his whole life, it’s an easy decision, and he makes it quickly—perhaps a little too quickly. Morpheus warns him, “Remember, all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more.” As soon as Neo chooses the red pill, his body begins a dangerous and painful transition out of the Matrix. The world he knows dissolves, and an entirely new (and bleak) one emerges.

Like Neo, I’m often very quick to choose the red pill. I’m curious by nature and just a little too quick to assume that the truth will set me free. As a result, I’ve spent a lot of years on my analyst’s couch wondering, as Cypher does in The Matrix, “Why, oh why didn’t I take the blue pill?” The more depths I plumb, the more I realize that like Morpheus my analyst is presenting a door, and it is my choice to walk through it or not. He offers me the truth, nothing more. He cannot say what the truth will look like, or how I will receive it, or how it will change my life. He can’t even promise that in knowing it I will be better off.

The better I understand myself—the more truths I uncover—the more I come to experience even the most complicated choices as already cast. In The Matrix Reloaded, the Oracle tells Neo, “You didn’t come here to make the choice. You’ve already made it. You’re here to try to understand why you made it.” According to this frame, destiny is the sum of choices we make based on the essence of who we are. Because we each embody some fixed fundamental nature, the choices that emerge from it are also fixed. They cannot change (even if we want them to) because that would mean going against the very fiber of who we are.

For me, taking the red pill has meant facing the truth that I cannot change my essential nature. I cannot make choices that defy it, even if those choices threaten the very safety of the matrix I’ve created around myself. Some of these choices terrify me. Who will I be? What will I want? Will I tell the truth?

I’ve spent most of my life trying to hide what I know. Repression worked reasonably well for me when I was a lonely kid navigating a parentless world, but now that I’m an adult with a kid of my own, it’s wearing a little thin. The truth always comes out. And anyway, there’s that Oracle whispering in my ear. You’ve already made the choice, she says. Deal with it.