“At some point, as Richard keeps telling me, you gotta let go and sit still and allow contentment to come to you. Letting go, of course, is a scary enterprise for those of us who believe that the world revolves only because it has a handle on the top of it which we personally turn, and that if we were to drop this handle for even a moment, well – that would be the end of the universe. But try dropping it....Sit quietly for now and cease your relentless participation. Watch what happens. The birds do not crash dead out of the sky in mid-flight, after all. The trees do not wither and die, the rivers do not run red with blood. Life continues to go on.... Why are you so sure that your micromanagement of every moment in this whole world is so essential? Why don’t you let it be?” – Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love
Control. Whether you do it out of desperation, or out of natural instinct, it has a lot todo with fear. The fear of losing our grip from matters of the heart or matters concerningthe future to the fear of being dominated, control is much like an escape plan we design to save ourselves. But little do we know that it pretty much restricts us from living. We are too busy making a living that we forget the essence of living. We are too busy managing different aspects of our life so much so that we forget how it feels to let life flow and take the course it is destined to. Sure, I don’t mean to say that we just need to sit back and let everything happen and just watch life as it goes by, as if life is a bus we are trying to catch. But many of us make it look like that. Like time is running out and nothing is in our hands and so, we just need to be on top of everything and not even give ourselves two seconds of a breather.
What is the harm in sitting on that rustic copper bench in the middle of the park with the autumn breeze and just listening to the birds chirp and the children play? What is the wrongdoing in giving yourself a break from the deadline for a little bit and going for a coffee to simply enjoy the company that your favorite magazine and your thoughts bring to you? Life can be tough and pressurizing, but then again, that has a lot to do with your perspective on life and deadlines.
There is always a constant conflict in our minds where we feel like we are missing out on something. So we try to take all matters in our hands, responsibilities on our shoulders and strive to be perfect. We don’t trust others with our work and so hesitate to delegate responsibilities. We cannot break free from our needs to be perfect, and so we complete tasks as the cost of our health and wellbeing.
And this is exactly what this excerpt from Eat Pray Love means to me. Having been greatly inspired by the thoughts and experiences of Elizabeth Gilbert, I could feel myself relate to every word she had to say about different situations we all encounter. This universe is a sphere of activity and experiences. We, often, mistakenly apprehend it to be a mass of our personal organization, control and management. But the universe is a much wider concept. The universe does not ask you to regulate or restrain, it asks for you to live and experience and celebrate your existence because that is what makes the universe a bubble of little, but important lives. Life is to be lived with ardor and gusto. Not with limitation and inhibition.
