Still A Dreamer

Are the words #1 New York Times Bestseller a draw for you? For me, generally not, though I find and read some by chance every now and then. And sometimes one comes to me through a friend, as did Eat, Pray, Love. Because we are kindred spirits and she thought I might enjoy it, I began to read.

Eat, Pray, Love is the story of one woman’s journey to find balance in her life, to become whole. It is a spiritual journey with many revelations along the way, as she travels, spending 4 months each, in Italy, India and Bali. With everything a woman in her thirties is supposed to be grateful to have – a husband, a great career, and the house in the country – Elizabeth Gilbert is utterly miserable. She makes the year long journey after a painful marriage and an even more painful divorce, followed by a profound depression.

One of the things that is so striking about the story told through her travels is that Gilbert had the courage to embark on this journey at all. I find the book to have its shortcomings, but as I finished it, I found myself impressed with the bravery it took for one woman, on her own, to pick up and travel to 3 foreign countries. She spoke none of their native languages, although yes, English is commonly spoken in all these places. In fact, she went to Italy in part to learn Italian. What she learned – in the Eat chapters – was to enjoy and appreciate … food, beauty, life, and she began to recover, putting on weight and feeling a greater balance.

In the Pray chapters, she is at an ashram in India, working through more of her issues and finding her religion, her God, the spirituality that resonates with Elizabeth Gilbert. She learns to truly pray. And while I found this section too long at times, it was still easy to get lost in India, as in Italy, in cultural experiences so totally different from our own and so rich in their own right.

And then Love. Bali was engrossing. One of Gilbert’s strengths as a journalist is describing so many aspects of the culture where she is living, and I found the Balinese to be fascinating. Here, Gilbert continues to heal and grow, and at long last find what she thought she might likely be without the rest of her life after her marital experience – love. And sex. It is interesting to watch how this plays out, and how, only in a book promo at the end, we find how it all truly ends.

In a conversation about Eat, Pray, Love that I had with another woman, she felt that Gilbert was spoiled and self-indulgent … who could just drop their lives and travel the world for one year on a search for themselves? Who could afford such a luxury? Especially in our pressured economic times, it’s easy to see where that may come from, for how many of us could take such a journey? And yes, at moments, Gilbert did seem a bit self-indulgent. Does she seem to belabor points at times? At times, for me, yes. Ultimately, however, this should not detract from the wonderful adventure – one woman’s search to find herself , find balance and to recover from paralyzing pain – and the depths within herself Gilbert was willing to plumb to do this.

There are life-changing experiences throughout, wonderful people Gilbert meets and befriends, and a spiritual search … I think there’s good stuff here for lots of us.