Book Club Discussion
Mon Jul 23, 2007 at 11:31:21 AM PDT
Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert was perfect reading for my recent foreign travels. In the book, which is a memoir, Gilbert embarks on a one-year trip abroad after a divorce and a bout of depression.
While I am not depressed nor divorced -- and I am a mom, which Gilbert intentionally chooses to forgo -- I love to travel and still do, even with a baby in tow. (Yes, I am paying for this right now with sleep deprivation as Eli is not on the same schedule as me. Ouch!)
Reading this book, made me want to visit especially Italy. When I do go -- a long ways away -- I will take Gilbert’s book with me. Reading her descriptions, made me want to go Naples to taste the pizza she wanted to make love to. I was fascinated by her stories on Roman and Sicilian history.
But most importantly, I could relate to the anguish of the human condition, always searching for anwers to that almighty question, “What is my purpose in life?” Gilbert sheds light on the universality of this experience in her travels to Italy, India and Indonesia, and provides brilliant insight.
There are so many nuggets in this book I love, but I will limit this discussion to what most struck me and more broad topics like one of our favorites here: religion. Feel free to discuss even if you have not read the book.
In Italy, Gilbert realized that one source of our suffering here in the United States is that we are a “busy” culture. We do not indulge in pleasures like the Italians who sit down for long, leasurely meals, dress up and head for a night out of town. We actually feel guilty for pursuing such pleasures, and others, like learning a foreign language when there is no practical application for it.
I, too, was guilty into falling into this mindset, automatically dismissing the book for the privileged. But as Gilbert pointed out, you don’t need to be rich to take a break for a meal. Even the day laborers in Italy go home for lunch. (Although in the States, I would say that day laborers can’t go home because they must go to their second jobs. Sorry, it is hard for me to thwart off this practical, American side of me!)
For me, though, a major obstacle in my pursuit of pleasure was my ingrained sense of Puritan guilt. Do I really deserve this pleasure? This is very American, too -- the insecurity about whether we have earned our happiness. Planet Advertising in America orbits completely around the need to convince the uncertain consumer that yes, you have actually warranted a special treat. This Bud’s for you! You Deserve a Break Today! Because You’re Worth It! You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby! And the insecure consumer thinks, Yeah! Thanks! I am gonna go buy a six-pack, damn it! Maybe even two six-packs! And then comes the reactionary binge. Followed by the remorse. Such advertising campaigns would probably not be as effective in the Italian culture, where people already know that they are entitled to enjoyment in this life. The reply in Italy to “You Deserve a Break Today” would probably be, Yeah, no duh. That’s why I’m planning on taking a break at noon, to go over to your house and sleep with your wife.
Is it possible for us Americans to slow down? Gilbert does a great job playing out her own inability to let go. Eventually -- it took her a year -- she does learn to relax.
Before we embark to India where Gilbert stayed at an Ashram, I want to dedicate this quote to Katie in New Hampshire. As you all know, she loves our book club discussions, especially when they pertain to west coast, new-agey themes. :-)
Even for me, even after all this time, I still find myself sometimes balking at the word Guru. This is not a problem for my friends in India; they grew up with the Guru principle, they’re relaxed with it. As one young Indian girl told me, “Everyone in India almost has a Guru!” I know what she meant to say (that almost everyone in India has a Guru) but I related more to her unintentional statement, because that’s how I feel sometimes -- like I almost have a Guru. Sometimes I just can’t seem to admit it because, as a good New Englander, skepticism and pragmatism are my intellectual heritage.
You see, Katie. This book provides valuable insight even for a practical New Englander like you!
J/K!
But Gilbert did delve into a topic that would make any New Englander or even an ingrained, guilt-ridden Catholic like myself cringe: choosing your religion, or as Gilbert described it, “cherry-picking” your religion. At one point in the book she described the dilemma of a friend who wanted to seek solace in the church. Like myself, he was a lapsed Catholic but did not feel comfortable dabbling in eastern religions. (Please note: For me, yoga is more exercise to get tight abs and not a religion for me.)
Of course, he’d be embarrassed to become a Hindu or a Buddhist or something wacky like that. So what could he do? As he told me, “You don’t want to go cherry-picking a religion.”
Which is a sentiment I completely respect except for the fact that I totally disagree. I think you have every right to cherry-pick when it comes to moving your spirit and finding peace in God. I think you are free to search for any metaphor whatsoever which will take you across the worldly divide whenever you need to be transported or comforted. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. It’s the history of mankind’s search for holiness. If humanity ever evolved in its exploration of the divine, a lot of us would still be worshipping golden Egyptian statues of cats. And this evolution of religious thinking does involve a fair bit of cherry-picking. You take whatever works from wherever you can find it, and you keep moving toward the light.
While I can't picture myself praying at an Ashram or wearing Indian garb at my favorite vegetarian restaurant, I like this concept of "cherry-picking" your religion. Just think of how much less violence we would have in the world if people cherry-picked rather than picked teams.
I know this is an ongoing discussion on our site, but what is your belief system? What do you think about "cherry-picking religions?"
Finally, I loved how the book ended. Of course, the beauty of a book as spiritual as this one is you leave with what you have discovered about yourself and your surroundings.
Because I was abroad, too, I liked the hidden theme that we can enjoy foreign cultures without berating our own. Sometimes when I travel abroad I focus on what I don’t have in the United States -- like time and extended family -- that I overlook what a privilege it is to live in this country.
This description of Bali culture by Gilbert gave me a lot of perspective:
Do the Balinese truly inhabit that peaceful balance, more than anyone else in the world? I mean, they look balanced, what with all the dancing and praying and feasting and beauty and smiling, but I don’t know what’s actually going on under there. The policemen really do wear flowers tucked behind their ears, but there’s corruption all over the place in Bali, just like the rest of Indonesia (as I found out firsthand the other day when I passed a uniformed man a few hundred bucks of under-the-table cash to illegally extend my visa so I could stay in Bali for four months, after all.) The Balinese quite literally live off their image of being the world’s most peaceful and devotional and artistically expressive people, but how much of that is intrinsic and how much of that is economically calculated? And how much can an outsider like me ever learn of the hidden stresses that might loiter behind those “shining faces”? It’s the same here as anywhere else—you look at the picture too closely and all the firm lines start to melt away into an indistinct mass of blurry brushstrokes and blended pixels.
This was my reaction when I visited Cuba. I admired the warmth and hospitality of the people and envied their tight social network. But they had to treat tourists well, or they wouldn’t eat.
Most recently, I had one little moment of depression in Crete when I realized DH’s cousins put in long hours at work -- without guilt -- because their parents watched the children. I was reeling with self-pity, thinking our lives in the States would be so much easier and richer if we had parents nearby to help with the kids. But I received a dose of perspective when this cousin admitted she married and had children young because there weren’t any other opportunities for her in Greece. Also, in meeting familial expectations, she couldn’t leave her parents’ home without being married first. "I want to live my life!" she frequently told me.
This is actually a point that Gilbert makes in her book. She says that sometimes people have children in “the absence of choices.” Very true.
I realized at that moment in Crete with the cousin, that despite my tiredness and lack of time, I did thoroughly enjoy my children. I did get to live my life before I had them. It made me grateful to live in the United States.
What did you think of this book, MotherTalkers? What else piqued your interest?
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