Literature I’m Loving: Untamed

I thought I’d start a little series where I’d share snippets from literature that I’m loving. Here’s a little snippet from Untamed. It’s a paragraph out of the prologue and it’s the perfect introduction to what this book is going to be.

A little background on the scene that plays in this excerpt: Glennon and her daughter are at the zoo and someone just asked the zookeeper if Tabitha, a domesticated cheetah, misses the wild.

I nodded at Tish and kept my eyes on Tabitha as she stalked. I wish I could ask her, “What’s happening inside you right now?”

I knew what she’d tell me. She’ say, “Something’s off about my life. I feel restless and frustrated. I have this hunch that everything was supposed to be more beautiful than this. I imagine fenceless, wide-open savannas. I want to run and hunt and kill. I want to sleep under an ink-black, silent sky filled with stars. It’s all so real I can taste it.”

Then she’d look back at the cage, the only home she’s ever known. She’d look at the smiling zookeepers, the bored spectators, and her panting, bouncing, begging best friend, the Lab.

She’d sigh and say, “I should be grateful. I have a good enough life here. It’s crazy to long for what doesn’t even exist.”

I’d say:

Tabitha. You are not crazy.

You are a goddamn cheetah.

– Glennon Doyle, Untamed, xv-xvi

We’re held back from so many things in our life because we’re “grateful” for what we have, because we stick to the life that’s “safer” for us, like the zoo is “safer” for Tabitha than the wild she longs for. Society traps us in cages that we don’t even know we’re in. We’ve gotten so comfortable with being uncomfortable. We’re used to the restlessness, the frustration. We’re constantly living our lives to make others happy and constantly are pushing our needs aside. And when we choose ourselves, when we choose something that makes us happy, something that is right for us, we feel guilty.

Let’s stop this, let’s stop settling and say yes.

Say yes to living a truer, more beautiful life for you.