Women-Working, shopping, cooking, loving, cleaning, helping, caring. Sometimes forgetting themselves.
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert is a reminder. It asks women to look within and ask themselves one simple yet radical question.
“What is it that you want?”
This book finds Elizabeth in the middle of the biggest personal crisis of her life, so far. She has been through a bitter divorce, a rebound romance that is now appearing to end painfully. She is confused, depressed, angry and self-deprecating. Exactly in the middle of all this, she dares to ask herself what she wants. Liz takes baby steps to answer that question and decides to give herself one year of her life. One year split across three completely different places: Italy, India and Indonesia.
In The Pursuit of Pleasure
Liz moves to Rome, Italy to learn Italian. She finds a little place for herself and joins a class to learn the language. As I was reading this part, I realized I was beginning to fall in love with the language. Here is one excerpt from the book that made me see the beauty of the language:
“In Italian the word to describe a close friend is un’amica stretta. The word stretta literally means tight, as in clothing like a tight skirt. So, a close friend, in Italian is one that you can wear tightly, snug against your skin.”
Liz enjoys everything about Italy. The heavenly food -the pastas, the pizzas and the gelatos made me go droooooooool! Just reading about it made me want to join her. I wanna go there someday!! She has fun in Italy, travelling, meeting people, learning the language. Sometimes, accosted by ‘Loneliness’ and ‘Depression’ she again plays the now familiar cat and mouse game with them. Four months fly by and Liz embarks on her spiritual journey.
In The Pursuit of Devotion
This part of the book has Liz scrubbing temple floors to perform seva, making new friends and attempting to focus and meditate beyond five minutes. Meditation and self-probing rake up past issues and her mind is in complete turmoil. Liz manages to overcome them and attains spiritual bliss.
I was in a flippant mood while reading this and realized that I didn’t enjoy this part of the book, because spirituality is not really my priority at the moment. I was also baffled by her spiritual accomplishments in four months and wondered if she has stumbled on an express spiritual path.
In The Pursuit of Balance
Liz goes to Bali to keep a promise. A promise made during her previous visit to a medicine man that she would return once more to stay with him. With this one action, Liz beats us all at the impulse game to win the title. Bali promises and delivers; good times, new friends, things to learn, people to treasure and love.
The book comes with an optimist’s dream come true ending and I am left wishing life works out well for every woman that I know.
-Veronika
3 of Spades 