Eat, Pray, Love

Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert...hmmmmm...what can I say about this book. It was a fantastic read, I admit. I was extremely impressed with her ability to be honest/real with the reader. I read a few reviews on Amazon.com and most of them were negative towards the author, claiming that she was self indulgent, selfish, and crazy! I would have to disagree...I think as women we sometimes can forget who we are. Although, I don't agree with the path that she chose to find herself (Italy/eating-yes, India/meditation-no)I took a lot of good information from her experience. I remember a couple of years ago, I was sitting with twenty other women at a women's breakfast and one woman asked every woman if they could truly say who they were as a woman. The rule was we could not say "mom" or "wife" or "daughter"...we had to really look deep in our lives and reveal who we were. I don't know why, but this challenge was so difficult for me! Elizabeth Gilbert dealth with this same challenge while she was in Italy. While traveling "eating" through Italy, she has a conversation with her friend about how every city has a word to describe it. Then he asks her what her word is...this is very difficult, and she actually does not come up with the word until a few months later when she is in India. When I read this, it reminded me to dig deep, and ask God to reveal who I am as a person, as His child. I have not yet found my word...I will let you know when I do.
There were many good quotes in this book. As I said before, I did not agree or believe in many of the areas she researched and fell into, including her heavy emphasis on meditation and her belief that there is no hell...however, I took her her experiences and made my own goals, including scheduling prayer as the author scheduled mediation times. All in all, it was an interesting read. I very much loved her travels through Italy, and although her travels through India and Indonesia were a little too "new age" for me, the book was a good read.
Here are a few of my favorite quotes:

"I love my pizza so much, in fact, that I have come to believe in my delirium that my pizza might actually love me, in return. I am having a relationship with this pizza..." Chapter 27

"Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a friend." Chapter 18

About happiness on page 260, "People universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. 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. If you don't, you will leak away your innate contentment. It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your sould hold tight to its good attainments."