Eat Pray Love

I finished this book after a few days of insane reading. I'm in love.

I was thinking and was reminded of this super cheesy quote from Captain Obvious. I've always hated it. You know it, I'm sure, the one that's on seventeen ceramic magnets in every gas station around the country-"Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for awhile and leave footprints on our hearts. And we are never, ever the same.."
If we can apply this to books, then I'm sure Eat Pray Love left stegosaurus-worthy, fossilized prints.

The book is the memoir of a life-changing year in the life of Elizabeth Gilbert. After a battle with depression and two heartbreaks, among other struggles, she takes a year traveling Italy, India, and Indonesia to learn about pleasure, spirituality and balance, respectively.
Gilbert's writing is charming and really, very good. But her ideas on life also have an incredible amount of insight and depth.
I finished this book wanting to take Italian and Yoga classes, with an itch for travel and craving a whole lot of pasta.

I highly recommend the book. It was a very timely balm for my soul. Also, I prescribe reading it in a bubble bath with aromatics, Sinatra and dark chocolates. It's the thing to do.

The following are some of my favorite excerpts and a few disorganized notes I took while reading. This is going to get long, look out.



"Looking for truth is not some kind of spazzy free-for-all, not even during this, the great age of the spazzy free-for-all.."

I agree with you, 100%, Liz, however it strikes me as odd that you would would say this. Especially in light of your particular theories. Stellar use of the word spazzy, though. I love it. We need that word in print more often.

"I believe that we shocked each other by how swiftly we went from being the people who knew each other best in the world to being a pair of the most mutually incomprehensible strangers who ever lived."

A keen observation. It made me sad when I visably nodded

"David's sudden emotional back-stepping probably would've been a catastrophe for me even under the best of circumstances, given that I am the planet's most affectionate life-form (something like a cross between a golden retriever and a barnacle), but this was my very worst of circumstances. I was despondent and dependent, needing more care than an armful of premature infant triplets. (This is the perfect word picture. Hits the nail on its proverbial head.) His withdrawal only made me more needy, and my neediness only advanced his withdrawals, until soon he was retreating under fire of my weeping pleas of, "Where are you going? What happened to us?"

(Dating tip: Men LOVE this.) "

Oh, sister, amen and amen.

"The fact is, I had become addicted to David (in my defense, he had fostered this, being something of a “man-fatale“), and now that his attention was wavering, I was suffering the easily foreseeable consequences. Addiction is the hallmark (hallmark is such a good word, i need to start using it...)of every infatuation-based love story. It all begins when the object of your adoration bestows upon you a heady, hallucinogenic dose of something you never even dared to admit that you wanted–an emotional speedball, perhaps, of thunderous love and roiling excitement. Soon you start craving that intense attention, with the hungry obsession of any junkie. When the drug is withheld, you promptly turn sick, crazy and depleted (not to mention resentful of the dealer who encouraged this addiction in the first place but who now refuses to pony up the good stuff anymore–despite the fact that you know he has it hidden somewhere, goddamn it, because he used to give it to you for free). Next stage finds you skinny and shaking in a corner, certain only that you would sell your soul or rob your neighbours just to have that thing even one more time. Meanwhile, the object of your adoration has now become repulsed by you. He looks at you like you’re someone he’s never met before, much less someone he once loved with high passion. The irony is, you can hardly blame him. I mean, check yourself out. You’re a pathetic mess, unrecognizable even to your own eyes.

So that’s it. You have now reached infatuation’s final destination–the complete and merciless devaluation of self."

This has to be one of the most perfect and revolting descriptions of a cycle I've struggled to pin down for so long. This is so heartbreakingly post-Eden and so my battle. Damn it....

"I crossed the street to walk in the sunshine..I leaned on my support network, cherishing my family and cultivating my most enlightening friendships. And when those officious women's magazines kept telling me that my low self-esteem wasn't helping depression matters at all, I got myself a pretty haircut, bought some fancy makeup and a nice dress. (When my friends complimented my new look, all I could say, grimly, was, "Operation Self-Esteem-Day Fucking One.")

:-)

It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly,
than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection.
-Bhagavad Gita

"When I get lonely these days, I think: So be lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person’s body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings."

This may have been the single most impacting paragraph for me.

"Moreover, I have boundary issues with men. Or maybe that's not fair to say. To have issues with boundaries, one must have boundaries in the first place, right? But I disappear into the person I love. I am the permeable membrane. If I love you, you can have everything. You can have my time, my devotion, my ass, my money, my family, my dog, my dog's money, my dog's time-- everything. If I love you, I will carry for you all your pain, I will assume for you all your debts (in every definition of the word), I will protect you from your own insecurity, I will project upon you all sorts of good qualities that you have never actually cultivated in yourself and I will buy Christmas presents for your entire family. I will give you the sun and the rain, and if they are not available, I will give you a sun check and a rain check. I will give you all this and more, until I get so exhausted and depleted that the only way I can recover my energy is by becoming infatuated with someone else."

"When you sense a faint potentiality for happiness after such dark times you must grab onto the ankles of that happiness and not let go until it drags you face-first out of the dirt-this is not selfishness, but obligation. You were given life; it is your duty to find something beautiful within that life, no matter how slight."

oh, and mercy on that poor potentiality for happiness if it turns out to be of the biological variety..

"I'm not interested in the insurance industry. I'm tired of being a skeptic, I'm irritated by spiritual prudence and I feel bored and parched by empirical debate. I don't want to hear it anymore. I couldn't care less about evidence and proof and assurances. I just want God. I want God inside me. I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on water."

While Gilbert's spiritual revelations and journeys were more not particularly something I can align myself with, even in my state of searching, I must still commend her greatly. She shows such serious commitment to chasing God and discovering who and what he is. Though her discoveries are questionable at best, I covet her passion and LOVE for God..I want to search for Him like that..

“But I don’t know how much more socializing I can do, Felipe. I only have the one dress. People will start to notice that I’m wearing the same thing all the time.”
“You’re young and beautiful, darling. You only need the one dress.”


Women, we're beautiful. Let's try to not forget. The world will be a much, much better place.


“We must get our hearts broken sometimes. This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.”


Selah.