Review: Eat, Pray, Love

Posted by Cynical Sarah on June 17, 2010

Generally I chose books like I choose the movies I watch; I look for entertainment value above all else. However, sometimes I stumble across a more artsy/enlightening/literary/soul searching book that catches my interest. This time it was Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert.

In a moment of weakness I was watching Julia Roberts on Oprah discussing the book and her experience starring in the movie. I’d never even heard of Eat, Pray, Love and here it was inspiring Julia Roberts, being talked about on Oprah and developing a small cult following.

The book is Gilbert’s search for life’s answers as she travels to Italy, India and Indonesia after her divorce. In as much as it is a spiritual journey, it is also a search to find out who she again.

The book is split into three sections, each with 36 chapters. There’s a significance to the way the book is structured and the number of chapters, but I’ll let you discover that for yourselves if you decide to pick it up and give it a read.

I didn’t dive into this book looking for answers, but I did find at least one idea or story that spoke to me out of each section.

The book begins in Italy, with some reflecting on how she ended up there divorced and learning Italian. This is the “Eat” part of the book where Gilbert lets herself experience all the pleasures that Italian food has to offer as she learns a language that will only be useful to her in Italy.

Chapter 21 is what spoke to me most in the Italy section. Gilbert writes:

Sometimes I wonder what I’m doing here, I admit it. While I came to Italy in order to experience pleasure, during the first few weeks I was here, I felt a bit of panic as to how one should do that. Frankly, pure pleasure is not in my cultural paradigm.

The rest of the chapter recounts her discussion with Luca Spaghetti about how Americans don’t really know how to do nothing. We seek entertainment and amusement, but we don’t now how to enjoy doing something that has no bigger purpose than to bring us pleasure.

That was something I could completely understand her struggling with. I’ve been unemployed for a year now, and I’ve spent so much time finding ways to occupy my time and be useful, that I haven’t taken the time to actually enjoy not having that responsibility either. I’ve found ways to make good use of my joblessness, and we’ve t taken advantage of it to do some fun activities like camping and fishing, but I haven’t taken a day to just do nothing and enjoy it.

The “Pray” section takes us to India as Gilbert visits her guru’s Ashram. This section was the one I thought I’d least identify with, but there was one particular chapter that was a sort of “aha” moment for me.

India is where Gilbert really struggles with her internal demons – no surprise since all she does is meditate and pray when she’s not helping clean as part of her Ashram duties. All that time alone with your thoughts is like a golden highway to brooding.

In Chapter 50 she talks about how guilty she feels being in India on this spiritual journey and she’s still wrapped up in thoughts of her ex-boyfriend and why she couldn’t make that relationship work or her marriage work. Of all the deep things she could be thinking about and trying to figure out at this time, she’s stuck on such a “shallow” topic.

But then she remembers a story her psychologist friend told her. She had volunteered to counsel a group of Cambodian refugees, and though these people had experienced genocide, torture, murder, starvation and more, what they most wanted to talk about were relationship issues.

Gilbert writes:

This is what we are like. Collectively, as a species, this is our emotional landscape.

I am just as prone to negative thoughts and brooding on actions and activities that have long since past. Now I know that I can just accept that those thoughts are a part of my human nature – accept them and let them go and don’t make it worse by beating myself up for having them.

In Indonesia, Gilbert finds love again. But it’s not her love story that I like from this section; it is a bit oflife lesson that she gets from Ketut.

In Chapter 87, Ketut talks about how he is able to use meditation that takes him “to up,” aka heaven. He also knows the meditation that takes him to hell. When Gilbert asks him what hell is like, he says it is the same as heaven.

Basically, the universe is a circle so the destination in the end is the same – it’s how you get there that makes the difference. You can choose to “go up” through happy places, or go down through sad places, but you’re going to end up at the same place in the end regardless.

Those are the top things I took from Eat, Pray, Love, but there are so many stories and so many different personal revelations that Gilbert has in her journey that the book will speak differently to people depending on where they’re at in their lives.

Throughout it all though, Gilbert’s writing is entertaining and she writes in a lighthearted way that allows you to find the humor in her journey as well as the lessons.

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