Clinging to the handle

I simply adore Eat, Pray, Love. Somehow, especially because I am listening to it, I feel like I’m talking to myself, or listening to myself talk. I love Elizabeth Gilbert’s writing style, her topic is salient, and I find myself alternately laughing and nodding in somber agreement.

A long passage – but so far my favorite:

“I know the sad longing to delay the end of another February 4. This sadness is one of the great trials of the human experiment. As far as we know, we are the only species on the planet who have been given the gift – or curse, perhaps – of awareness of our own mortality. Everyone here eventually dies; we’re just the lucky ones who get to think about this fact every day. How are you going to cope with this information? …. over the years, my hypersensitive awareness of time’s speed led me to push myself to experience life at a maximum pace. If I were going to have such a short visit one earth, I had to do everything possible to experience it now….
I should say here that I’m aware not everyone goes through this kind of metaphysical crisis. Some of us are hardwired for anxiety about mortality, while some of us just seem more comfortable with the whole deal. You meet a lot of apathetic people in this world, of course, but you also meet some people who seem able to gracefully accept the terms upon which the universe operates and who genuinely don’t seem troubled by its paradoxes and injustices….
Life, if you keep chasing it so hard, will drive you to death. Time – when pursued like a bandit – will behave like one; always remaining one county or one room ahead of you, changing its name and hair color to elude you, slipping out the back door of the motel just as you’re banging through the lobby with your newest search warrant. You have to admit that you can’t catch it. That you’re not supposed to catch it. 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 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.”

1 thought on “Clinging to the handle”

  1. It’s breathtaking, isn’t it? This book seriously had an enormous impact on my life in so many facets. It’s a definite re-read to recall so many snippets of critical information I have already forgotten. Thanks for sharing your insight.

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