Eat, Pray, Love

Before I buy a book, i shamelessly stand in Borders, reading at least the first 20 pages of the book. Being a fast reader, It would take me 15 minutes or so. The reason I do this is because if the first 20 pages does not arrest me, there is little hope that the next 200 pages will and hence, there is no use of adding a book I simply won't finish to the rest of my collection.

I must admit that Eat Pray Love, the book did not wow me. It was whiny, self loathing, and a journey of an American woman who's been too blessed to handle a few glitches in her life. I put down the NY Times Best seller back into its rack, and decided that it wasn't a good read. While i have no idea if i would have found the beauty of the book as many have raved about in the next 400 pages as others have, I must admit that the movie did do something to me. It might have been the cinematography, or the comic that sent me into fits of laughter, or just plain old gorgeous Julia Roberts and her spectacular acting, but serendipity as it was for me to watch it because I had no other options of greater movies to spend the last few hours of my weekend in, I thought it was a pretty decent movie, especially one involving a journey of self discovery.

As i watched the movie, I saw alot of myself in it. From struggling into jeans sizes I was "supposed" to be able to fit in, to eating and experiencing my food as an adventure itself, to the box she had that bear all her dreams of the places she wanted to go to but never had the time or opportunity to. I have to admit that I might not be able to feel her frustration of constantly finding something lacking in the relationships she was in, since I am in a pretty awesome one, but if i was in anything lesser than awesome, I would be the real life "Elizabeth Gilbert".

People judge people. It doesn't matter if you move to some foreign country to get away from the judgmental buggers, you will find that even strangers judge you and your choices in life. People of all walks of my life, tell me what they think I should do everyday. But nobody has asked me, "What do you want?" But this has got me thinking, if you keep living up to people's standards, you will come to realise at some point of your life that it just doesn't cut it. As crazy and unrealistic as your dreams seem to be, if you don't get it out of your system, you will never be able to find that "word" to describe yourself, because there will be thousands of what ifs. If you do not experience life the way you want to, your life will never be .. how do i put it.... 'your own'.

I find myself at crossroads these days. If you notice, the more i have on my mind, the lesser I write. It has nothing to do with me finding it too personal to put up on a blog read by strangers, it is more of me not knowing where to begin, or how to pin point the root of my disheveled mind. Because there is so much of unresolved needs i carry in my baggage, when I fall down and my baggage splits open, I find myself picking up the pieces, not knowing which is more important than the other to pick up first.

I've decided to pick up the book anyway, because maybe, maybe something in it might help me pick up the pieces. I might not have the money, liberty, and time to run halfway across the globe to discover myself the way Elizabeth Gilbert did, and i certainly have no intention of checking myself into an ashram, but maybe.. maybe.. I could at least finally find that word that truly defines me.