I love books about travel…mostly because I’m unable to travel much myself. In Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert takes us through three very different worlds as she travels from Italy, India and Indonesia in the pursuit of joy and self peace. She reached her early 30s and realized that she did not really want the things that she had been working towards such as her marriage and children. She went through a difficult divorce and then proceeded to spend a year traveling, looking for enjoyment.
The author speaks about how one of her dreams has always been to learn Italian, as frivolous as that is. She went to Italy, went to language school, ate and enjoyed good company. My favorite point that she makes in this section is about how Americans are so driven that we feel guilty when we do relax and just hang out. She said in Italy that wasn’t looked at as strange at all.
In India the author went to an Ashram in India planning to spend part of her time studying devotion at her guru’s for several months before traveling the rest of her time. Instead, she spends all of her time at the Ashram and quickly slips into a very different routine of meditation, prayer and strict devotion from what she had lived in Italy. Again, she meets fascinating people from all over the world and learns even more about herself and her strengths.
After India she travels to Indonesia because when she had been there years before for a yoga retreat, a Balinese medicine man had prophesied that she would be back to study with him. She returns to Indonesia with no real travel plan except to find this man…and is disappointed when he at first does not recognize her. She ends up studying with him, making close friends, and finding love in unexpected places. This is the chapter about balance, about pulling together the different things that she had learned into one package.
I really enjoyed this book. It sounds like a dream to me, to be able to do this sort of traveling and build relationships with people all over the world.
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