Monday, March 2, 2009

Book Review: Eat, Pray, Love

When I went to the library a few weeks ago, I checked out the book called Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Since this book came out it has been on pretty much all the bestseller lists, and has been on my list of books to read.

It is about a woman in her early thirties who seems to have the life anyone would want, a husband, successful career, nice house, etc but even though she has all these things she is not happy and fulfilled. She ends up divorcing her husband and spiraling into a depression. After this she decides to travel, examining 3 aspects of life in 3 different countries: pleasure in Italy, devotion in India, and in Indonesia (well..the island of Bali) a healthy balance of both.

I thought I would type out my favourite little part of the book, its about happiness. Here it is:

"I keep remembering one of my Guru's teachings about happiness. She says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. 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. "

I totally love this paragraph from the book, I think its really true and something we should all think about. Anyways, basically I loved this book, and I highly recommend it.

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