Minecraft and Letting Go....

I was stirring the pulao that I was cooking, soaking in the aromas of the vegetables and spices...soaking in my thoughts of some things that had come up in my recent conversations with a friend...watching my mind go into rewind as old memories that had settled down like fine dust, seemed to have suddenly been stirred....a whisper from somewhere inside seemed to now scream  to me - "Let go! Let go!"...Perhaps I should let go...

A few minutes later, I was sitting at my computer, when I read something with this quote ~

“A ship is always safe at the shore - but that is NOT what it is built for.”
~ Albert Einstein

Was that a signal for me? I wondered, as my eyes wandered up to meet the sea and the sky, that were drawing me into their arms. Was I ready to let go?
"You will know when you are ready, just as softly and naturally as your gaze shifted now to meet us", they seemed to say to me.

The still waters were disturbed by the ripples that were born from a quiet cry from Raghav. Something had upset him, while I was away with my thoughts. I went close to him, met his eyes with mine, and hugged him. His eyes were full of beads of tears, hanging in there on the edge. They seemed to be waiting for me to come and wipe them away. And then, Raghav shared what had happened.

He had been trying to build a recycling centre while playing MineCraft, and had used lava to fill in one of the containers. That proved to be a disaster as the whole building caught fire and would not stop. He was in tears.....desperately trying to put out the fire, as it was destroying everything that he had built! I realised as he was talking to the water, asking it to pour itself out fast and more, that the fire was REAL for him. He managed to build a wall around the place to prevent it from spreading. All along, tears streamed down his face. His  little world was being destroyed right in front of his eyes. He could not take that.

And then, he realised that in his urgency to put out the fire, he had poured too much water, and his recycling plant was already gone. Now he had a problem with too much water! So he started using gold blocks to build over the water. But that wouldn't work, as there was too much water and he could not figure out where it started and ended! So he had to build walls around it and turn it into a waterfall.

He then took a break and we spoke about how he was feeling. There were so many words that came up - 'anger', 'sadness', 'mad at myself', 'helpless' and some more. I was amazed at the vocabulary of emotions that he was feeling and now expressing. "I just don't even want to look at that waterfall", he told me. "It makes me very very sad when I see it." 

"The recycling centre is gone.....just gone!", he cried. I knew that feeling.....that feeling of saying goodbye to something that you loved dearly. Letting go is often hard. I was still struggling like him to let go of so many things.

Then he went on to reflect a little more -

"Atleast I am happy that I managed to build a wall, so that the fire didn't spread and destroy Creepville."

" I shouldn't have used lava, I shouldn't have put the wool next to the lava.....that's what made the fire spread, because that is inflammable....I should have used stone or gold blocks instead."

"I made a mistake, but atleast it was not big enough to destroy everything that I had built!"

I got back to the pulao that was cooking on my stove, while he settled down to give the finishing touches to the waterfall that he had created out of the disaster. He then came up to the kitchen with tears in his eyes and held up his iPad to show me something. Right near the wall that he had built around the waterfall, he had made a little board in memory of the disaster that read: " The great fire of creepville took place here :( "

We hugged each other and shared a few silent tears. We were both in the same boat...

Perhaps he had learned to let go...

I am still learning... 

I wonder if we would know and be able to feel the beauty of the present moment, if we had no memories and things to let go of.

Letting go is beautiful...much like the wispy dreams that you hold in your heart and set free into the heart of the Universe....memories may come back to haunt you again some other time, some other day....and in that coming back, you will also remember the sweetness of how you chose to let go....