Book 09-04: Eat Pray Love

At last, after 48 years, I'm finally done with Eat Pray Love (Elizabeth Gilbert). I struggled with this book and I got thisclose to stopping reading it altogether. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice book. It's just that I find it un poco aburrido. It's a nice book about self-discovery and one's relationship with one's religion/God and since I think I am in a journey of self-discovery and am rediscovering my faith as well, I really pushed myself to finish this one.

I, myself, am in search of this very elusive thing which we refer to as happiness. I think I've grasped what it is and how to achieve it, such as money can't buy you real happiness or that you have to work really hard for it. It's a decision you have to make every day.

Happiness is the consequence of personal effort . You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't you will leak away your innate contentment. It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments.

Happiness is not something that comes out of nowhere and I think that the way to it is to appreciate simple and mundane things in life, to be grateful for everything. All of the self-help books and blogs all say that GRATITUDE is the way to happiness. Find at least 3 things you're thankful for everyday and you'll find yourself appreciating life more.

I also remember the priest's sermon last night about prayer. We only pray to God when we need something from Him and forget about Him for the time being we aren't asking for something. Wala lang, ang galing lang ng timing. And in the book it's also said that if we pray for something from God, we have to ask for something specific. We have to give details, specifications and be cautious about what we pray for. In other words (Pussycat Dolls' version), "be careful what you wish for cos you just might get it."

Another theme I liked was Liz's relationship with love. I've never been in love before but I like her realizations about it.

In desperate love, we invent the characters of our partners, demanding that they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place.

Addiction is the hallmark of every infatuation-based love story. It all begins when the object of your adoration bestows upon you a heady, hallucinogenic dose of something you never even dared to admit that you wanted -- an emotional speedball, perhaps, of thunderous love and rolling excitement. Soon you start craving that intense attention, with the hungry obsession of any junkie. When the drug is withheld, you promptly turn sick, crazy and depleted.

Correct, diba? I can relate these snippets with idol-fan relationships. As with idols, we have our own perceptions of them since we don't know them personally. But when we meet them and they turn out not to be what or who we thought they were or they fall short of our expectations, we become very disappointed. I guess that's the same with relationships. You should go into it accepting the other person for whom he really is and not what you think he is or would want him to be. As with addictions, I think I am so guilty of that. And I won't expound on that.

Nice naman. Yun nga lang some parts were boring kaya umabot ng 3 months ang pagbabasa ko. En vez de un libro cada dos semanas, un libro cada dos meses, mas o menos. Ayayayay~


Next: The Time Traveler's Wife