8 Things I Have Learned from Eat, Pray, Love (hopefully for good)

Several posts ago, I wrote briefly about Elizabeth Gilbert's book Eat, Pray, Love and how much I enjoyed it. I also shared several of my favorite quotes, which is a very very small piece of what I liked about the memoir because I found myself wanting to quote almost everything. However, I did not share what I got out of the book personally, and, for my own benefit more than anything, I feel the need to make a list of what I got out of the book. Because I am certainly thinking and acting differently now that I have read it. If this makes any sense at all, I feel like a more intentional person, or at the very least, as if I am shifting in that direction. So here are some things that I got out of Eat, Pray, Love:

1. I don't worry as much anymore. About a number of things. Currently, I'm not worried about when I get married or who I will marry. That part of my life is best left to God because any time that I try to make things happen, it never works out. Liz jumped the gun with her marriage and found out later that it was not what she wanted at all. During this period of singleness, I am learning patience, as well as, trying to figure out who I am, what I want, and what love means exactly.

2. I'm not worried about money. I used to worry about it all the time, and I was a stingy person as a result. But I have been finding that there is joy in giving my money to benefit other people. It makes me want to keep giving more, and in the end, I always find that I have either enough or more than enough, and that God keeps on blessing me.

It is important to clarify, that I do not give so I can reap blessings from God (even though that is a nice thought, blessings, that is). My main reason for giving is because I hate the selfish, ungrateful person I become when I am hanging onto every penny and then squandering it on things for myself. Deep down, I really despise that person. It took a force of will to make myself start giving a portion of money away each month. I didn't want to. I really didn't. Finally, I asked God to please show me who I should give to because I kept coming up with excuses as to why I should keep putting it into my bank account. But giving away my money when I have bills to pay helps me build trust in God. It shows me that He will always take care of me and that I have so much to be grateful for because I live in a house, I have enough to eat, I have more than enough clothes, and I am surrounded by family and friends. Not to mention, I have several jobs on top of all that.

While I already had the above thoughts circling in my mind before I read her book, Liz seemed to validate these ideas and show them in action. And while before, I tried not to worry about money, the difference is that now I do not worry about money.

3. I find myself praying and talking to God more. I find myself wanting to have quiet time so I can discover what God is saying to me and what my heart is telling me. I want the same peace of mind, the same joy and simplicity that Liz Gilbert found from her meditation practices. I also see that peace of mind is a choice and that it is not an impossible thing to want, but if I do want it, then I am the one who must ask for it and do everything I can to attain it.

4. I find myself looking at life through a more humorous lens. Sometimes I take things way too seriously, and I miss out on a lot of fun and laughter. Perhaps I should laugh at myself more, and maybe if I smile more in general, it will start feeling more natural. This is a hard thing to do when you are already thoroughly irritated, but it's worth a shot. The old medicine man in Bali gave Liz the simplest meditation to practice: Just sit and smile, he told her.

5. I don't feel the need to criticize "religion." Well, the many facets of the Christian religion. Growing up in a Christian home, it has always been something that has hovered over me. Lately, it is not something I want to focus on anymore. I would rather work on myself and try to love people more because that is one thing I have a hard time with. Until then, I just want to forget about everything else.
In the past, when someone had a different viewpoint than me on the subject of religion, I felt a sort of unresolved discontentment. This comes from my Christian upbringing, I suppose, where one is told that we should be "evangelizing" all the time and "saving" people. I have never been all that comfortable with modern sales-pitch evangelizing, but for a long while, I felt a certain amount of guilt whenever I let a moment pass when I could have been "witnessing" to someone. And that is all I'm going to say because I'd rather not bore myself or anyone else for that matter. There is one part in the book where someone tells Liz, if someone tries to argue with you about a certain aspect of their spirituality, for instance, they are trying to tell you that their way of praying is the best, simply say, "I agree," and then go home and pray your way. I found it amazingly reassuring and relieving that I don't have to make people see my way, and I don't need to get disgruntled if they think or do something different than me. It's simply not that important. There is also a quote that I like from Ralph Waldo Emerson: "God enters by a private door into every individual."

6. Life is a brilliant adventure. What more can I say? Except that I don't feel like I'm tapping into the adventure part of life very actively. But I should start. And it's not that I should, but that I want to.

7. God does answer prayers. Sometimes in a timely fashion, sometimes not. It struck me as very awesome and very revealing that Liz's prayers were answered, often in humorous, ironic ways. Sometimes right away, and sometimes later down the road when she least expected it. But they did get answered. Somehow, and this book has a lot to do with it, I feel more confident with my prayers. When I pray, I expect things to happen. For some reason, before, it had always been a question.

8. Good things will come in their own time. Life may seem miserable and full of despair now, but if I could see several years down the road, I would see that I have nothing to worry about at all. Any pain I am feeling now, will make the good things that happen later all the more meaningful.

Eat, Pray, Love

I'm reading Eat, Pray, Love right now, and I think I'm falling in love with it. Perhaps because I feel like I'm becoming a better person as I'm reading it. The kind of person who is more sure of herself, less afraid to make mistakes, and more willing to live fully in the present. Liz Gilbert just took me on this amazing trip to Italy, and now I am living with her in an Ashram in India soaking up the wisdom that she is soaking up from the unique people around her as she learns the art of devotion, develops a yearning for God's presence, and makes me want to teleport to that very spot in India right this second. She describes her first night there, in the cool temple courtyard surrounded by the gardens, underneath the starry midnight sky, accompanied by the voices lifted up in song with the beat of the drums increasing in speed and excitement as they greet the approaching new year.

Even though I am not physically there, I feel like her experience has become a part of me, a kind of yearning for more beauty and more sacredness in my life. Because that is what I felt when I read that particular passage. I felt as if I were stepping into something sacred and passionate.

And then there are the people who speak words of truth and encouragement into her life, words that propel her on her journey of healing. Here are some of my favorites:

Teenage Indian boy: "Take seriously. Make punctual. Be cool and easy. Remember--everything you do, you do for God. And everything God does, He do for you." 131

Richard from Texas: “Stay put Groceries. Forget about sight seeing—you got the rest of your life for that. You’re on a spiritual journey baby. Don’t cop out and only go halfway to your potential. You got a personal invitation from God here—you really gonna turn that away?

Liz (aka. Groceries): “But what about all those beautiful things to see in India? Isn’t it kind of a pity to travel halfway around the world just to stay in a little Ashram the whole time?

Richard from Texas: “Groceries, baby, listen to your friend Richard. You go set your lily-white ass down in that meditation cave every day for the next three months and I promise you this—you’re gonna start seeing some stuff that’s so damn beautiful it’ll make you wanna throw rocks at the Taj Mahal.”

More from Richard from Texas:

“Big deal. So you fell in love with someone. Don’t you see what happened? This guy touched a place in your heart deeper than you thought you were capable of reaching, I mean you got zapped kiddo. But that love you felt, that’s just the beginning. You just got a taste of love. That’s just limited little rinky-dinky mortal love. Wait till you see how much more deeply you can love than that. Heck, Groceries—you have the capacity to someday love the whole world…”

Liz responds to this epic, heart-revitalizing statement: “But…I seriously believed David was my soul mate.”

Get ready for another epic piece of wisdom from Richard:

“He probably was. Your problem is you don’t understand what that word means. 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’s 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 they leave. …”

So that’s just a little taste of the book and some passages that opened up a different way of thinking to me. If you ever get the chance, this book is a great read.

And Nothing Was Simple There

Before I started reading A Moveable Feast I didn’t understand Ernest Hemingway. I didn’t care enough to understand him anyway. I didn’t get why everyone made such a big deal about him. Maybe its because the first contact I had with his writing was The Old Man and the Sea in high school where I was too impressionable back then, and although I didn’t complain, everyone else did about what a boring piece of writing they had to read. And so they didn’t. But I did, although I can’t remember if I tried to understand it or not, then.

I picked up A Moveable Feast because someone had made a reference to it in their book, and I wanted to know what they were talking about. It’s the kind of book that one can sit comfortably with, and I’ve made it a ritual to sit with it and a cup of tea in the morning to suddenly find myself in Paris or the Austrian mountains and for once see a clear picture of a person who writes because he has to, not for money which he probably couldn’t stand the thought of, but because it was in his blood. Because everything was a story to him and his best friends were pencil and paper so he could get it all down.

He had a funny way of looking at people, like he didn’t miss a thing and he noticed everything about them on the first meeting. I never really knew that first impressions meant anything until he described a person looking “marked for death” or how a man looked rather nasty, not evil, but nasty, and the way these first impressions made him perceive these people from then on. He always seemed to know what was going on and what people were talking about, even though they didn’t say it directly, and I also found that he had a great capacity for being a friend even if he didn’t enjoy being with a person all that much. On the other hand, he could be an angry, intolerant fiend if the right person came along to press his buttons.

He has a way of describing the every day and the mundane in a way that makes you care, and then at the end he’ll throw a twist in that makes you read the paragraph over to figure out the mystery of it that he won’t say flat out.

He is honest in every observation and thought and word.

“I knew I must write a novel…I would put it off though until I could not help doing it. I was damned if I would write one because it was what I should do if were to eat regularly. When I had to write, then it would be the only thing to do and there would be no choice. Let the pressure build. In the meantime, I would write a long story about whatever I knew best.”

“But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight.”