I dearly hope that I am one of these mid-level dust-caked people, but I don’t know. I only
know that I have been driven to find inner peace with methods that might seem a bit drastic
for the general populace. (For instance, when I told one friend back in New York City that I
was going to India to live in an Ashram and search for divinity, he sighed and said, “Oh,
there’s a part of me that so wishes I wanted to do that... but I really have no desire for it
whatsoever.”) I don’t know that I have much of a choice, though. I have searched frantically
for contentment for so many years in so many ways, and all these acquisitions and accom-
plishments—they run you down in the end. 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, leaving only a burning cigarette in the ashtray to taunt you. At some point you have
to stop because it won’t. 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 that the world re-
volves 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, Groceries. This is the message I’m getting. 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. Even the Italian post office will keep limping along, doing its own thing
without you—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?
I hear this argument and it appeals to me. I believe in it, intellectually. I really do. But then
I wonder—with all my restless yearning, with all my hyped-up fervor and with this stupidly
hungry nature of mine—what should I do with my energy, instead?
That answer arrives, too:
Look for God, suggests my Guru. Look for God like a man with his head on fire looks for
water.
Eat, Pray, Love