Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia is a 2006 by Elizabeth Gilbert. This book details her trip around the world after a painful divorce with her husband, and the journey of self-discovery she experienced during her travels.
Elizabeth Gilbert, at the age of 32, was an educated, successful writer that found herself going through a divorce and potential ‘midlife crisis’.
She jumped from a marriage into a redound relationship which introduced her to an Indian guru. However, she soon realized he was too young, and she needed to look elsewhere to find what she felt was missing.
She spent:
- four months in Italy, eating and enjoying life (“Eat”).
- three months in India, finding her spirituality (“Pray”).
- 5 months in Bali, Indonesia, looking for “balance” of the two, and found herself falling deeply in love with a Brazilian businessman (“Love”).
I will leave you to discover the rest, but this journey for me was truly magical. I felt this book demonstrated that it is okay to do what YOU want to do. It is okay to be selfish sometimes. It is okay to follow your own inner voice, rather than trying to always please other people.
This life is a gift, so why spend it living someone else’s life?
Quotes from the book
“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.
A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.
A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master…”
“This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.”
“I have a history of making decisions very quickly about men. I have always fallen in love fast and without measuring risks. I have a tendency not only to see the best in everyone, but to assume that everyone is emotionally capable of reaching his highest potential. I have fallen in love more times than I care to count with the highest potential of a man, rather than with the man himself, and I have hung on to the relationship for a long time (sometimes far too long) waiting for the man to ascend to his own greatness. Many times in romance I have been a victim of my own optimism.”
“Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for 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 into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.”
“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.”
“Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.”