Eat, Pray, Love

As I was Christmas shopping today, I came across the movie Eat, Pray, Love.  Two thoughts came to mind:
1.  I never actually got to see the movie like I wanted.
2.  I never wrote the Eat, Pray, Love blog that I intended to write when I started this blog. 


Tonight, I rented the movie and I am so glad I read the book.  It is much better.  Or maybe I am in a completely different life now than I was three months ago.  It is odd to think about... three months ago when I read this book I was a different person than I am today.  My life was different than it is now.  The future looks different now than it did three months ago.  It has just been three months...


So, here it is- the blog that meant more three months ago, but that still needs to be written.

Eat, Pray, Love

"Why must everything always have a practical application?  I'd been such a diligent soldier for year...Is this lifetime supposed to be only about duty? In this dark period of loss, did I need any justification for.... other than that it was the only thing I could imagine bringing me any pleasure right now?"  This is how I felt the moment I bought my mustang. No it makes no practical sense to own three vehicles, but if it makes me happy why not?

"What about the benefits of living harmoniously amid extremes? What if you could somehow create an expansive enough life that you could synchronize seemingly incongruous opposites into a worldview that excludes nothing?...I wanted worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence- the dual glories of a human life...the singular balance of the good and the beautiful." I've always wanted BOTH- I've never wanted to choose.  I am a gemini and I've always searched for the compromise. I want to do good and to be happy. 

"I'm here.  I love you.  I don't care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you...There's nothing you can ever do to lose my love... Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a friend." I commit to forgive myself and never give up on myself. I am strong, brave, and beautiful... and there will be moments when I am not perfect, but I promise to still love myself.

"Virginia Wolf wrote, 'Across the broad continents of a woman's life falls the shadow of a sword.' On one side of that sword, she said, there lies convention and tradition and order...But on the other side of that sword...'all is confusion.'"I want to live on both sides of the sword.

"But is is such a bad thing to live like this for just a little while? Just for a few months of one's life, is it so awful to travel through time with no greater ambition than to find the next lovely meal? ...Or to nap in a garden, in a patch of sunlight, in the middle of the day, right next to your favorite fountain? And then to do it again the next day?" Aaahhh... the perfect summary to my summer.

"In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible.  Pleasure cannot be bargained down."  I love making finding pleasure a priority.

"If faith were rational, it wouldn't b- by definition-faith. Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity..." Living by faith is not easy, but it is a better option than living in frustration.  Everything will always work out.  Done.

"We gallop through our lives like circus performers balancing on two speeding side-by-side horses- one foot is on the horse called 'fate' and the other on the horse called 'free-will.'  And the question you have to ask every day is- which horse is which? Which horse do I need to stop worrying about... and which do I need to steer with concentrated effort?" Honestly, I need to remember this. I need to worry less about the things I can't control.  As long as I do what I need to do, fate will take care of the rest. 

The journey for recovering from heartbreak-
Eat- learning to just find pleasure. 
Pray- finding faith, inner peace, and the grace of God
Love- opening back up to the idea that wounded in the first place

The question... where am I on this journey?