Eat Pray Love - the final analysis

Eat Pray Love would seem a perfect book for me right now, truly. And yet, I found the chipper tone and cutesy jokey manner way too, well, chipper and cutesy -- I am not so sufficiently past the things that ail me, those same things that were ailing the author, to be able to laugh along with her. That said, the book has had echoes I didn't expect.

Author Liz Gilbert embarked on a journey of the heart and soul to try to reclaim herself (or perhaps to actually find herself in the first place) after a difficult divorce and a heartbreak over another seemingly perfect man. I am heartbroken that a seemingly perfect man has decided against Uz, or the Uz we knew anyway, and so the journey Liz took was of special interest. Rarely does a book and the therapy it is supposed to do match so perfectly.

Liz and I would likely not be friends -- her determined optimism gets on my nerves. As well, I cannot imagine wanting to meditate in a place where drinks are decidedly NOT served, and am bored senseless with the idea of chanting and getting spiritual-- the heart of the book and her life. This is more my flaw than hers, I readily admit it. She is both lighter and deeper than I am, and both ends of that spectrum took me out of the book's flow.

However, Liz did offer wisdom and her book has stayed with me in ways I didn't expect. She took months off to meditate in an ashram, a real one, the kind you find in India, and she clearly broke through to the very soul of herself. She found the core of the universe. But she also found one truth that resonated deeply and may resonate with anyone who inexplicably cannot see the forest for the trees with men, and who attaches herself to what they colloquially call "bad boys" or at least men bad for her. Because such a thing as hitching yourself to someone bad for you does not actually make sense, there has to be a neurotic reason for it.

What Liz discovered is that she loved most not the man she was with but who he could be-- she loved her vision of him, in other words. This is perilously close to a narcissist who loves only an image. But if I were to be painfully honest I would have to say that I loved who I knew he could be, who he was on the way to becoming....not so much who he reverted to and who he IS, in fact, right this minute. People don't change, anyone will tell you that, but it isn't actually true. People sometimes don't STAY changed, that's the thing.

That I loved someone who no longer exists is not truly a consolation -- it's a death, really, and I grieve it deeply. It is frustrating that he COULD have existed. But that is a selfish thing for me to wish, of course.

Still, for this small piece of insight and small peace of mind, the book was well worth the experience.