Book Club: Eat, Pray, Love: 32-36

The second book in our book club series is Eat, Pray Love. Is it a Hindu book? Not exactly, but it is very relevant to the experiences of non-Indian Hindus. The author has a Hindu guru (whose identity has been rather easily found out by those familiar with the world of Indian gurus). Julia Roberts after playing the author in the movie, claimed to have become a Hindu. So I think it will be worthwhile to examine the experiences and stories that led these women towards Hinduism…

Bead 32

I admire her friend Linda based on the descriptions. She sounds so free from the neurosis of self-doubt. I think too much, ponder and worry over every tiny thing until I spiral down into inaction. It is my goal to be more light in the heart and it sounds like Linda is exactly the kind of person I’m hoping to grow into!

I love how Gilbert is able to capture the spirit of each different Italian city. In Venice she says:

“Somewhere in my I am able to recognize that this is not my melancholy; this is the city’s own indigenous melancholy, and I am healthy enough these days to be able to feel the difference between me and it.”

I think that’s a great metaphor for our lives. We have to learn how to keep our joyful spirit through life’s difficult parts and to see that those difficulties belong to life itself, not to us. We don’t have to own them, we don’t have to take them on.

Bead 33

I love her theory (or I guess I should say Giulio’s theory) that every place and person have a single word that sum them up and if your word doesn’t match a place, you’ll never feel at home there.

I’m not able to think of a word for me yet, though I’m not sure I’m on a journey to find my word the way Gilbert is. I may have to give that some more thought. There are a lot of sides to me. A therapist once called me “complex.” Hmm, maybe that’s my word. :-/

Bead 34

I feel the same way about American Thanksgiving. It’s pretty much our only holiday that is not commercialized and also not religious, so we can all enjoy it together. And its message is one of gratitude, which we can always use more of in our lives. I’ve come to really love Thanksgiving. (Leaving aside its terrible history and origin story!)

Bead 35

A cute little interlude

Bead 36

What a fascinating way to look at Italy, that it trusts only beauty and the senses.

“To devote yourself to the creation and enjoyment of beauty, then, can be a serious business–not always necessarily a means of escaping reality, but sometimes a means of holding on to the real when everything else is flaking away…”

Another part of this section I really liked was “when you sense a faint potentiality for happiness after such dark times you must grab onto the ankles of that happiness and not let go until it drags you face-first out of the dirt–this is not selfishness, but obligation.”

And with that, at last, we’re heading to India!