We seem to always be on the go. Always here, always there, always gone. Very rarely is there a time where we stop, think, and enjoy. We live in a time and place where the American dream is worth the stress, annoyance, irritation, insomnia, and torture that we induce on ourselves on a day to day, moment to moment basis. Sweet. While this is all fine and dandy, when do we have time to stop and smell the roses, stop and watch the sunset, stop and enjoy the fruits of our labor? It's like we're on a hamster wheel, rolling, running, moving, but to where? We don't know. But it seems, someone did know.
At work, my work was assigned to me, and my first client was a bit different from the other people I have worked with before. In the fast-paced city of New York, where the cars are fast and the people are faster, this woman was slow. Not in the sense of mental retardation, but everything from here demeanor to her general approach to her speech was labored. This was a big change, and little did I know that I would be taking a chapter from her book of life.
As we walked out the office, we began talking. I did my usual spiel, but she told me she was not here for that, she just wanted to have a look see at some other options. She began talking more, and she said that one of the things she loved most about the city, about life was watching the sunset. Before she made this discovery, her life was going going going. She had no time for nature, she had no time for life, and she certainly had no time for some silly sunset. It was just one day when the sunset caught her by surprise.
She was going about her daily business, rushing to finish one thing so that she could start another, when she happened across the window and caught the sunset. She watched as the color of sky shift and morphed, radiating brilliant shades of light blue, then pink, the softening to purple, and fading right into the dark blue. She was mesmerized by the way the sun stretched, put on its pajamas, and called it a night. Something so powerful, something, so important could throw in the towel and rest, and here she was a lowly human being struggling to do more.
In that moment, she took a moment to reflect, she took a moment to realize that in the attempt to control her life, in the attempt to make all of this happen, in the attempt to live the dream, she had created this nightmare. She had created for herself a place and a situation that not only looked dismal, but ripped the ban-aid off the fact that in the attempt to control her destiny, she lost control of her life. In the attempt to keep a firm hand on everything around her, she wound up being under the firm hand of what she called her life.
In that moment, she knew that in order to truly be in control, she would have to let go of the “control” that she had illusioned herself into having. Only then would she be able to enjoy life, still working and moving and doing, but not for the dream that she had seen herself achieving, but truly for the chance to let it all go, to watch the sunset. This woman, with the calm demeanor, a woman who seemed so unhurried and deliberate was not always this way, and that was ok, in fact better than okay because she had the control that we all are so desperate to have. I was envious of this woman who learned that to truly have control, there was a necessity to lose control, but I knew that this was the goal. She took a break from the hamster wheel and watched her surroundings. She figured out that the goal was to fight to be free from my created control, and enjoy the small things. Enjoy the sunset.
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