Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia
by Elizabeth Gilbert
Eat, Pray, Love (2/7/2009)
While I respect Elizabeth Gilbert's desire to find God and herself after what was clearly a life-shattering event in life - who wouldn't want crave clarity and meaning after a divorce? - but her method seems a bit extreme, to say the least. As another reader said, this is a cathartic work, but didn't leave me a reader with more than awareness and understanding than I had before reading her book. Many times throughout the book I wanted to scream at her to just get a grip, pull herself up by the bootstraps and move on. However it did leave me pondering about the lengths some will go to find meaning and spirituality in their lives as if there is an absolute and definitive answer while clearly dismissing simple acceptance. Does knowing God and have a spiritual awareness only come if you can meditate yourself into another dimension? I think by accepting this notion, one misses on the everyday simplicity of spirituality that exists within us as well as that which surrounds us.