Eat Pray Love

Eat Pray Love is the best book I have read in the past year. However, if you are not someone who enjoys analyzing your life in painful detail, then it's probably not for you. As the author, Elizabeth Gilbert says: “I understand that an unexamined life is not worth living, but do you think I could someday have an unexamined lunch?”

Elizabeth Gilbert spent a year traveling in Italy, India and Indonesia, putting herself back together after a divorce and searching for meaning in her life. I read it the first time for enjoyment, and then I read it again because there were wonderful tidbits that I wanted to remember. (My copy is well highlighted and dog-eared). Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the book.

… to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice. I am loyal and constant in my love for travel, as I have not always been loyal and constant in my other loves. I feel about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky restless newborn baby – I just don’t care what it puts me through. Because I adore it. Because it’s mine. Because it looks exactly like me. It can barf all over me if it wants to – I just don’t care.

The search for contentment is not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people.

You're wishin' too much, baby. You gotta stop wearing your wishbone where your backgone oughta be. - Richard

There's also a quote about how our negativity only adds to the collective evil in the world, but I can't find it. If anyone knows the quote and where to find it, please let me know.