eat, pray, love
May 13, 2010 at 2:33 PM 
i just finished reading this amazing book, and since i know i'm YEARS behind what most bibliophiles are reading, i want to know what you thought of this book.
to me her time in italy was thrilling, i am now totally motivated to get passports for my husband and i and i want to get out there and see this giant blueberry we live upon. i see much of myself right now in this section of the book because while i'm not on anti-depressants, i have struggled very much with depression over the past 8 years of child-rearing. right now i see myself finding the joy and pleasure of life all around me as i break from the bands of depression and loneliness. i want to see, taste, and enjoy everything.
india... india was kinda meh. maybe because i see spirituality so differently, maybe because the idea of spending all day meditating while four children run circles around me is so far from what is feasible... what did you think? what moved you about her time in india?
bali is where my tears started to flow though. where it all came together. where her pleasure and spirituality joined force to give her happiness and joy from within. where meditation met every day (ish) life. on page 260 she talks about happiness and diligent joy:
"happiness is the consequence of personal effort. you fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it... you have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. and once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward in that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. if you don't, you will leak away your innate contentment. it's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments."
and suddenly it all clicked in my head. the same lesson i've been taught my whole life, that truth requires sacrifice. it all made sense, line upon line, grace upon grace. now it's truly the act of putting one foot in front of another, prodding on, continuing on to keep and hold that happiness.
tell me, dear friends, what did you think of it? what stuck out in your minds? what helped heal a portion of the road you're on? or did you just hate it?
Reader Comments (15)
It was a few years ago when I read this book, so my memories might not be as clear as they should about details- I think I had just finished my yoga teacher training, so the part when she was in India rung so true with me. I saw myself coming out of a huge learning/transitional stage. I was in a really hard place in my career and found my practice to be so healing and so calming in a time when I just wanted to quit my job. I wasn't quite ready to start our family though we had been married for a few years- I think I was struggling with not being a college kid and not quite feeling like I was an adult. When she talked about going to India, being at the ashram I wanted to be there too. I saw the peace that being in the yoga studio and on my mat gave me, what amazing things would happen if I were sitting in an ashram?! I saw myself struggling with sitting in mediation (and still do) and I think I laughed outloud at a few of her thoughs during meditation because they are oh so true, quite mind, shhhhh, hush, just sit here...
I saw myself living the contradictions, just as soon as I declared I didn't like something or was going to do blah-blah-blah, the very opposite would happen and I would have to learn and grow from it (Refering to her going silent and then being assigned the "greater")
I loved her time in Itally, but more for the food description than anything! um, yum gelato for breakfast, yes please!
In the quote you chose above:
I think the part about maintaining your happiness is so true- it is like a friendship, a marraige, and your relationship with your own body/mind/spirit- Finding what brings you joy on a regular basis in each of these things will only keep this hapiness going.
I do know that the part when she was in Bali I felt like the story started to drag on... I got it but I didn't.
I should pick it up again and maybe see what I get from the book this time around, funny how your perspective of a story/adventure can change depedning on where you are in your life....
that passage from the book has been kind of like a mantra for me ever since i read it.
that happiness isn't a prize or the luck of the draw but something that we actively create and need to maintain...and i think happiness can feel really profound when we've worked so hard to get there.
i've read the book numerous times and i actually find as i'm at different stages there are different parts of that book that i find i'm more drawn to (and get more from)!
This one is SO on my list of things to read this summer!! You're not the only one behind!
Hmmm... It's funny how events happening in your life color your opinions of what you're reading. I read this book because a close friend told me how life changing it was for her. I was reading Italy when the same close friend had an affair, destroyed her marriage and family and moved to Europe to be with a man she met online, and used Eat, Pray, Love as part of her justification for her actions. As I cooked dinner for her husband and kids during those first few weeks, I had a hard time relating to Eat, Pray, Love. In fact, I hated it. But, I'm normally all about pursuing your dreams and (of course) travel, and I like the quote about happiness, so maybe I should give it another chance?
I loved it when i listened to it on podcast a few years ago. I love the part you quoted, such an easy thing to forget!!!
India was actually my favorite part - I loved that she gave herself that austere experience and loved her friendship with the gruff man that called her groceries. It has always been a closet desire to sneak off to an ashram...in another life, likely...
Thanks for triggering some good memories!
http://www.oprah.com/omagazine/Elizabeth-Gilbert-Talk-from-O-Magazines-10th-Anniversary-Video
watch this ----^
i'm turning into an elizabeth gilbert groupie... i just love her transparency.
thank you for contributing to the discussion, would love to keep it going.
jolie... i think that the description of the book alone kept me from delving in for several years. marriage is hard enough without seeing someone happily leave hers and run off to travel the world. however... i found so much wisdom here in my life and a courage to accept my happy life for exactly what it was. i am right where i want to be and honestly feel like this book helped me to see it. i don't think her journey was so much about escaping the life she lived as much as finding peace and truth with herself. there's a part later on that really spoke to me as well,
"they say that an oak tree is brought into creation by two forces at the same time. obviously, there is the acorn from which it all begins, the seed which holds all the promise and potential, which grows into the tree. .. there is another force operating here as well-- the future tree itself, which wants so badly to exist that it pulls the acorn into being, drawing the seedling forth with longing out of the void, guiding the evolution from nothingness to maturity. in this respect, say the Zens, it is the oak tree that creates the very acorn from which it was born."
i've looked at the trenches of my life and can see two things that have gotten me through it, a knowledge that before i was right here i KNEW that i was in the right place doing the right thing. and looking forward with hope that somehow, someday the joy of a life well lived would actually be accomplished. i can feel that future self prodding me along, showing me the way, reminding me that these moments are fleeting.
xoxo
I LOVE this book. It's sits upon my shelf to be pages through at a moments notice. I've even highlighted my favorite passages so that, in the midst of motherhood-craziness, I can read the snippets closest to my heart.
Bali was my favorite too. :) I love the combination of living with pleasure and having spiritual rites and rituals. It's sort of closest to how I live, so I assume that's why I love it so.
Italy is my favorite though on the days I'm crabby. Pizza, wine, gelato....nuff said.
Ahhh...yes, this book is one I've read & re-read. India did click in with me, but I believe that's because I am deeply immersed in a daily meditation practice so her descriptions of the STRUGGLE this is resonated on so many levels. I meditate, but it isn't "natural" for me. I have to work things around my kids, my job, you name it. Still, I did get into that. Bali was by far my favorite as well. Not just because here's where the "Happily Ever After" with a man happened, but because it felt like the place where Gilbert truly found the balance between pleasure and spirit. As I mentioned to you the other day, my copy is a bit dog-eared in the places where she writes about the hell it is to go through a divorce. Though my ex and I have found a decent (if delicate) series of compromises and work to be respectful of one another, it has been *hard* all the way...mind-numbingly, bone-crunchingly hard. So that she gets to the low point she does initially makes perfect sense to me. I'm glad you shared your thoughts on it too...it's definitely one to get people talking!
Love,
D.
I've been wanting to respond but a bit nervous. i dont want to offend.
I didn't really like the book. In fact, i never finished it. i felt that she made happiness to complicated. with her conclusion rooted in pasts and futures rather than right now. it was a lot of searching and not much being. im a much bigger fan of maezen's take on happiness. i dont want to butcher her words but here are a few of my favorites, both from Hand Wash Cold.
In re: how can i find happiness: "In the asking, we make happiness a mystery: an elusive pursuit, an incomplete project, a scientific inquiry with inconclusive results. Yet the more we search, the farther afield we stray. The more we question, the more we doubt. Happiness is not a science, an art, or an outcome. It can't be quantified, procured, or consumed. It's not invented, but comes naturally made from mud and honeysuckle, pitted olives, and doting granddads who hoist you into their laps for a bumpy ride on a secondhand tractor. It's what we are when we are utterly ourselves in unaffected ease. Happiness is simple, everything we do to find it is complicated."
In re: seeking: "The search for greater meaning robs our life of meaning. The pursuit of higher purpose leaves us purposeless. The world doesn't need another wanderlusting soul-seeker. The world needs a homemaker - me- to make my home within it. "
if you go to her site and put happiness in the search button it will pull up a whole series of posts she did on the subject a while back. i happened upon them in the throws of post partum depression. these were so grounding and simple for me. i too have struggled deeply with depression, exacerbated with the birth of my sweet girl, and it seems, for me anyway, the less i search for it, the more i notice that it is there.
off to finish the book now and maybe follow suit with a discussion of my own. thanks for the conversation and opportunity to think about it some more. you always inspire.
awww, latisha, i'm so glad you threw this in. i totally get what you're saying here. for me i often beat myself up because i KNOW the answers are right here, i know that my life is blessed, so when the happiness isn't there the guilt from this throws me further down the spiral staircase of depression. i've learned much from KMM, taking the emotion out of my laundry and making it a place of love and meditation has been key to remembering happiness in simplicity. i'm going to have to do a happiness search of her site. (i love that she puts a key word search in the back of her books so that we can find exactly what we're looking for).
one more thing i wanted to add (sorry i'll get off your blog someday). Pema Chodron has a book on CD called "Getting Unstuck." I double-top secret with a cherry on top highly recommend it. It covers exactly what you are talking about. My library had it. It's a lecture she did, so I don't think it's available in book format, but it's worth listening to only a few CDs long.
She talks about shenpa (sp?) which is basically the spiral you refer to and how to celebrate the KNOWING. that that in and of itself is cause for joy. that your soul has reached a point where it can see, and as hard as it may seem, should be a joyous thing. Think about the soul work you have done in order to get to that point. so let your sadness be, but don't judge it. it's neither good or bad. maezen has a great post on that too...wonder if i can find it? hmm... anyway pema offers some great steps on how to get out of the judging of sadness and not let it lead to guilt. this lecture has helped me in ways i cannot verbalize.
okay i think ive taken over your comments enough. thanks again for all that you share.
Jenica,
I absolutely love your posts. Been a fan for a long time. As for Eat Pray Love - and especially the India part, well, taking a year off to find ourselves is not an option for most of us. While marriage and parenting are difficult, leaving the country is not what most of are looking for. Yes, It is easy to find peace at a monastary, but try finding peace with marriage, 3 kids, bills, budgets, work, writing, breakfast, lunch, dinner, cleaning, soccer and dance. Leaving a marriage and fleeing our current life for a year is a dreamy thought especially when it involves "eating, praying, and loving someone new" but, like the previous commentor, I think Hand Wash Cold offers something better: Happiness right where you are.
Have a wonderful day.
Rebecca
i love this, and love that it's bringing out a few readers who haven't commented before. HI! ;-D
rebecca, i totally agree and am excited to say that hand wash cold is the next book on my agenda. hopefully i'll do a little review/spread the love on it in the next little bit. it's so nice to "meet" you.
xoxo
Hi Honey,
I absolutely love your quote on happiness! That's amazing and so real! I didn't catch the name of the book you read or the author. Sounds like you truly enjoyed it! Thanks for sharing!
I loved the book for her honesty, her great writing and because I love memoirs and being a voyeur to someone's personal journey. I love that E. Gilbert gave it her all in each country, courageously and compassionately. And yet, *personally* I am much more interested in finding peace, happiness and love in my own backyard, surrounded by the beautiful chaos of my family.
ps: I also read "committed" by E. Gilbert. Not quite the whirlwind of E,P,L but a sweet story and insight into her new marriage, thoughts on monogamy and committment (lived by two adults who are childless and have plenty of money with which to hide out in foreign countries while waiting for visa's)