Just finished Eat Pray Love - a book written with such humility and humanity.Elizabeth Gilbert’s account of her year of pilgrimage to Italy, India and Bali, engages the reader directly with her struggles with identity, spirituality and meaning.
These themes, while serious and weighty, are written about in a wonderfully funny and eloquent way.
There is a searching intelligence and also humour in this book which makes it not only engaging, but also deeply moving.
This is not a ‘self help book’. Gilbert does not attempt to provide answers instead Gilbert openly identifies the limits of her own understanding and search for meaning.
I like the fact that she places her own search for meaning within the context of research about the places, religions and people in her journey.
This book is about a person who also searches for meaning and understanding through reading.
Gilbert’s time in India was the part of the book that resonated with me. I liked the way she traced how her ideas and thoughts were constantly challenged.
She shows how we are far too accustomed to trying to find answers about ourselves easily and quickly. As if the any other way would be a failure.
In this section, the paths to enlightenment and illumination are not always the ‘big’ or ‘grand’ moment we envisage them to be.
Rather, as the book shows, they are in the small pockets of silence, generosity and friendship we often overlook.
Namaste.
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