Scripps Sunday #97 - Ushuaia Edition
Turning to the day and to each other,
we open ourselves to the day and each other.
This is the day that the Lord has made
and a day we’ll make our way through.
Whether with ease or pain,
With energy or exhaustion,
with patience or anxiety,
with joy or sorrow,
with celebration or disappointment,
may we find opportunities for generosity
toward others and ourselves.
May we find moments of encounter
even in isolation.
May we always know that we are held in Your love,
and may that love spill over into the people before us.
May we see others as You see them with deep delight,
and may we remember that we belong to each other.
May we begin again
where we have failed again.
Because this is a way of living
That’s worth living daily.
The Kindest Thing
an essay From Elizabeth Gilbert
I want to tell you the story about the
kindest thing anyone ever did for me, and how it changed my life.
Twenty-five years ago, I was a
thirty-year-old woman going through my darkest night of the soul. I won’t get
into the details because anyone who has ever read or seen EAT PRAY LOVE already
knows what happened, but the general outline of the matter was this: I had
obediently done exactly what my family and culture had always told me to do
(got married young, settled down in the suburbs, bought a house, and was
planning to start a family) but instead of making me happy, the life I was
living made me want to die.
My misery was not an easy thing for me
to admit, because this is the life you’re supposed to want — this is the life
that is supposed to fulfill you —but eventually I told the truth and left my
marriage, and then my worst nightmare came true: Many people in my life were
furious at me and disappointed in me. I am the sort of person for whom nothing
is worse than the disapproval of others, and so I felt, all over again, like I
was going to die. I was depressed and anxious, confused and ashamed. How had I failed
so miserably at life? Why couldn’t I just want what I was supposed to want,
instead of longing to run away and be free? Why didn’t I want a husband? Why
didn’t I want a baby? Why had I let everyone down? What was the matter with me?
During this time, I was a magazine
journalist, and I got sent to Indonesia to write a story. I decided to extend
my visit for a few weeks, because some deep inner voice was telling me very
specifically that I needed to go to the furthest away place in the world, far
from everyone I knew, and that I needed to be in absolute silence for 10 days —
to try to find some peace from my shame and from the voices in my head that
told me I was a loser and a failure and a selfish monster. So I heard
about this little island called Gili Meno, off the coast of Lombok, and I took
two ferries, several long drives, and a fishing boat to get there.
I haven’t been to Gili Meno in
twenty-five years and I’m sure it’s changed, but back then it was a remote and
dusty little fishing island, inhabited by impoverished Muslims who lived off
whatever they could pull from the sea. There was no electricity, and tiny,
starved-looking horses pulled carts that served as transportation—but mostly,
everyone just walked. I rented a little cabin on the beach for 15 dollars a
day, and there, I sat in silence with myself, hoping that I just stopped
talking and moving, I would find peace. But peace was elusive, because I was
really a mess.
I spent those 10 days alternating
between weeping and meditating, praying and listening. I barely ate—sometimes
only have one egg a day—and never said a word the whole time. I hadn’t brought
any books or paper, either, because this inner voice had told me I needed to be
absolutely alone. I was trying so hard to hear the voice of God, and to find
some sort of ANSWER, but mostly I just suffered in torments of the mind. But
every day I would go for two walks — circumnavigating the island once at
sunrise, and once at sunset. I never spoke to anyone, and people left me alone.
I was skinny and weird and I think I threw off a strange vibe.
But there was one woman who I saw
every day—on the other side of the island from me. She lived in a small hut,
and the sign outside her door said she took in laundry. Every morning and every
evening when I did my walks, I would find her standing outside her door-less
shack, smiling at me as if she had been waiting for me. Always wearing the same
dress and headscarf, with her little naked toddler boy at her feet. We would
smile and bow to each other, and that was pretty much the only human contact I
had the whole time.
On my 8th day on the
island, I got sick. Ferociously sick. To this day, I don’t know what it was. It
could hardly have been food poisoning because I was barely eating, but the
water might have been bad, or perhaps I caught something from a mosquito. It
felt like I had malaria. I felt like I was dying. Vomiting and diarrhea,
shaking one moment and freezing the next, teeth chattering, the worst headache
of my life. All I could do was crawl back and forth from the bed to the toilet.
I ran out of bottled water and didn’t have the strength to leave my cabin and
find more. I passed the night in misery, and the next day, too — unable to move
or call for help. I thought, “I’m going to die here, and nobody even knows who
I am.”
Of course I did not go for my walks
while I was ill. But on the second night of my sickness, I heard a knock at the
door. I literally crawled to the door and opened it. It was the woman—my silent
friend from across the island. She had come looking for me, and I could see by
her face that she was worried.
How had she known? How had she known that I needed help? Was it because I had looked so sick already? Was it because she thought it suspicious that I hadn’t gone walking that day? How had she known where to find? It was an hour walk from her house to the place I was staying…who was watching her child, while she went out in the dark to see if I was alright?
I don’t know the answer to any of
these questions, because we were both in silence and we didn’t speak a word of
each other’s language. All I know is that she held up one finger — the
international signal for “wait right here” — and then she disappeared into the
night. When she returned an hour later, she brought me bottles of fresh water,
a plate of rice, some sort of herbs. She came into the cabin and held me
against her body while she offered me this water, this food, these medicinal
plants. I wept and wept in her arms, and she held me and rocked as if I were
her child, even though we were probably the same age. She stayed with me until
I stopped weeping, and then brought me more water and went home for the night.
The next morning, I was well again.
And the next night— my final night on the island — I went out I sat under the
stars to meditate. I sat in silence for over an hour, just listening to the
wind and the water. Then the most extraordinary thing happened: As I sat in
stillness, I felt a presence arise within me. A divine being entered my
consciousness. It was a woman, a kind woman, with a scarf around her head. She
came right into my heart and said to me, “Bring me all your pain and fear and
shame, so I can heal it.”
One story at a time, I told this woman in my heart every single painful and fearful and shameful thing I had ever done. Each tale was like a small orphaned child, head bent in hunger and loneliness. And she welcomed each and every one of those children into my heart, saying, “Come in, come in, we have beds for you.” She did this for hours, until I had admitted to every single bit of my suffering. Then she smiled at me from my heart and said, “I have room for all of them. We will always have room for them here. Each one of these children is welcome here. There is nothing they could ever do to lose my love.”
Comments
Post a Comment