Lately I have no idea what to write on my blog. I just love to pick some quotes from book, song or movie.
Well, book I have read at this moment is Eat, Pray and Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.
It’s about the author’s journey to Italia, India, and Indonesia. And she found her love in Indonesia, that is what makes me interested with the book.
In this memoir, Elizabeth Gilbert is having a major mental breakdown and panic attack. She wants out of her marriage, has no desire to have kids and basically spends every night crying on her bathroom floor, to which I thought, eeewwww, that’s really gross. Why the bathroom floor? So after her bitter divorce, heartbroken with the man she had an affair with, and deeply depressed she decides to drop everything and sets out to “find herself”. She decides that this can be done by taking a year off from life and simply traveling! Now this is where I got really jealous. What fun! To have the time, money, and resources to just travel. I haven’t been anywhere! Okay, done now, let’s move on.
So she sets out to discover pleasure in Italy, devotion in India, and balance between the two in Indonesia. And it didn’t hurt that her publishers had already offered her a book deal about her experiences before she left, which leaves me to beg the question: did the book come out of her experiences or did she create her experiences to write this book ? Makes me wonder . . .
We begin in Italy where I began to get really hungry. Elizabeth Gilbert basically eats for four months! What I wouldn’t give to eat out everyday on wonderful food and feel good about it! I just wanted to reach through the pages of the book, pull her plate off of the table and devour it myself.
In India, Gilbert spends time learning how to meditate and draw closer to God by living in an ashram. She had little pep talks to herself . It’s not to odd for me, because i used to do that also.
In Indonesia, she simply steps off the plane and begins her search for a medicine man whom she had met years earlier. I couldn’t believe how brave she was. Since I’ve never traveled, I couldn’t imagine arriving somewhere with absolutely no plans. One, she’s by herself. Two, she has no idea where she’s staying. Three, she doesn’t even know if this guy is even alive. Sounds like fun except for the fact that she’s traveling alone. I couldn’t do it. But everywhere she goes Elizabeth Gilbert makes best friends with everybody, so she’s never lonely for long. It’s also here that she meets her future husband and basically shuts herself in his bedroom where they have sex for what seems like months on end.
So probably not the best in depth review but those were some of my thoughts as I read the book. The book gets pretty deep and philosophical as Gilbert takes us on her journey to discover herself. I had to keep reminding myself that this was Gilbert’s honest experience and not a self help guide for the rest of us, although we could glean some life lessons from it.
One of my favorite quotes in Eat Pray Love :
“I’m here. I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you. There’s nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than depression and I am braver than loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.”
That was conversation between her and herself. I like that. It’s show me how my self love me so much. Better than everything, everyone. The most loyal person ever in my life.
So did I like it? Yes and no. It was fun to read about her adventures, the writing style was personable, she certainly learned a lot of lessons that we could all try to apply in our own lives. But there was something a bit irritating about it as well. I didn’t relate to her character very well. And perhaps, I was jealous of the opportunities that she had to travel abroad for so long.