Eat Pray Love

One of my friends gave me a book to read this week. This is the same friend that sometimes brings me margarita glasses or bottles of wine or yoga DVD's. She's also been known to motivate me into exercising, and she's the only other person on the planet who can get anywhere near my one-woman cat, so she's his sitter. As you can see, she's a valuable friend. She's a gem, and she brought me a gem of a book. It was so good I just have to tell you all to go get it and read it. I loved every bit of it. From the cover art to the last goodbye, this book is fantastic.

The book entitled Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert is a series of articles about a year in her life when she stepped back and said “who am I”, and the path she took to discover the answer. Ms. Gilbert, as it turns out, was already a professional writer, and that may explain why the book was so well written. Her style of writing has depth and humor rolled into one. When I grow up, I want to write like she does. In fact, I wish I had written this book.

During her year of living discoverously, she traveled to three areas of the globe that held some sort of fascination for her and along the way she met many a strange and wise character. She learned to listen with her heart as well as her ears, and write from her being as well as her mind.

I can’t tell you too much, or it would ruin your read, but I will tell you that she threw herself whole heartedly into three very foreign landscapes and came out looking like a local. She did, in fact, learn who she really was at the time and developed a path to continue to lead her to who she was going to be in the future. She became, I think, very flexible.

There were many times during my read that I would say to myself, that was fantastic, I should put that in my blog, there were just so many really cool concepts to ponder. I guess my favorite, and the one I will share with you is this:

On page 95 she says “The Bhagavad Gita – the ancient Indian Yogic text- says that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly then to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection”.

I definitely have that living imperfectly concept down. Living imperfectly is a constant companion on my path. We hold hands while we walk. We are great friends. You could say we are peas in a pod. Add to that the fact that I have never been attracted to imitation anything, except of course when it comes to acrylic nails, and although I often find bits and pieces of others that I admire and wish to emulate, like for instance Tony Robbins in his live with passion frenzy or this writer, Elizabeth Gilbert with her humorous insightful style of writing, I think I’m safe in saying my life’s goal has never been to imitate anyone.

I’m an imperfect original and apparently I’m walking an imperfectly authentic path. According to the Bhagavad Gita, I’m doing great!