How curt it might sound when the whole world is fighting an enemy they are uncertain of and here I was, swooning on the silence it has created or the stillness it has brought upon us. I was anticipating how the world would look like if the entire world stops — the child-like excitement crept into me and took me back to those lines from my favourite book Eat Pray Love, which I must have cherished, thinking if that could be possible when the writer says, “I wanted the whole world to go into pause until I catch up with the world.”
But what I wanted was to catch up with the world I think I couldn’t catch up with while it resumed. Well, maybe there are layers of life that might want to get peeled off, but we can always save that for some other day. The lingering thought, however, was, “Oh! Now it’s here..let me dive deep into this when there is nowhere to go, nothing I am getting late at, nothing to attend to and nothing to be taken care of for everything is at pause…” Wasn’t this feeling itself not enough for me to take my mind off the virus and the havoc it created by?
Then maybe, a yet another part of me intruded my stillness, asking me how can I be so naive about when the world around me is juggling. It sometimes drove me and dragged me to the edge of questioning, “Are you not guilty and if you’re not, you should be… Do you really think you see this as a chance to rebuild yourself, rework and realign with yourself by digging into your hobbies, working on your health or keeping up with your fascinating reads, and as long as you’re sleeping long, as if there is no worry just because everything is at pause, are you trying to show that you are grown up to take ecstasy in minding your own business?”
Well, moments were fleeting by on ‘To be or not be’, but this time, I decide the yet another ‘Let it be’. At least things stopped appearing like a struggle for me and therein, I found myself saying aloud, “Did you see this? This is how it is supposed to be done! You learn, you grow, you do what is important to you and you care in your heart. You don’t have to show or make it mandatory for yourself to go out there and show that you are a good person. You know you care. You know you love and that is enough. You just be.” Elizabeth Gilbert chimes in again, “God is not interested in how and what you do, God dwells in you as you.”
So, I found myself saying, “I will just be with care and prayer in my heart, but keeping up with myself, letting myself to show up for myself, even if I had to put some extra mile to love myself without being guilty of not showing great concern to the world, that’s okay. I won’t hesitate. Sometimes, the world will be fine if you are fine.”
I guess that’s how these toughest times taught me, that’s what 2020 taught me: first look for yourself without being guilty.