I watched a movie this evening, ‘Eat, Pray, Love’. It was about a woman who had lost herself in life from living the expectations she thought she had and doing the things she thought she was supposed to do. When she finally realized she wasn’t living life, but simply going through the motions she decided to take a year and travel to places she thought she would find herself in.
She was trying to recover mainly from a broken marriage that she ended up in because of expectations, and not because it completed her. She hated herself for the failure and was broken hearted for the loss.
The character started her journey in Rome. She learned in Rome how to live. How to feel alive. How to not just eat food, but to taste it while it is in your mouth. It was her time to step out of her own life and learn to feel and taste everything around her.
Her next stop was in India. She went to India to study harmony and peace in a spiritual retreat. It was hard for her to succumb to meditation, prayer and looking at herself, but after help from a friend and watching her surroundings, she learned to forgive. She learned how to forgive herself for things she was less than proud of. She learned to let go of her mistakes and expectations and offer herself a fresh start.
From here she finished her year of discovery in Bali. Bali had a medicine man that she had visited years earlier and she went to him daily to learn how to heal the heart and soul and understand life. He taught her to have balance in her life. To find where her balance was and what made her feel whole. She met a man in Bali and it started to distract her from the studies of the medicine man. After spending much time with the new man in her life she started to become very afraid she was loosing herself and started to feel the slip of balance. Thinking this was the worse thing that could happen- since she had dedicated a full year of her life to finding that balance, she got rid of the new love and began to head back to her life in the US as planned.
Before leaving she learned from the medicine man that sometimes knowing your balance and being thrown off of it for the love of love, was the only way to feel, live and understand life.
Why do I recap this movie?
Well as I was watching the movie I became teary eyed many times and fought the urge to break down entirely throughout the entire film. Everything seemed to hit right home with me. I feel very happy and very fortunate for all of my amazing blessings in life, but I also feel strongly that I am not living life entirely, but going through the motions instead, in search of feeling in balance. I feel that I have yet to know what if feels like to really be alive.
As I watched the movie I felt understood, and validated through a story I felt I could relate so well to. Problem- the woman sitting just to the left of me was bawling through the entire film. Reason for that? Well I am assuming her life has brought her to a place where she too was feeling understood and validated by this film. And as I thought about it more, I realized there is a reason this book (movie came from a best selling book) is a best seller. There is a reason the book became a movie. There are thousands of people that watch and read this story and find themselves in the same place I was in.
Thinking about this made me angry. So as I was watching the movie I tried to understand what made me so angry about this concept. I figured it out. I stopped feeling understood and suddenly felt just like everyone else. The problem with this? Well if so many feel this way, then surely they are all trying to find that inner peace as well and live the picture of happiness they know to be their dream. I am not oblivious to the world, so I also see very many people not living their dream and not feeling whole. What does this mean? Some people never find it. They never learn to be balanced and happy.
Which made me afraid. What if I spend my life searching and never get to be like the character in the movie that actually figures it out. I don’t like to feel ordinary, like my journey is the same as the rest. I like to know that my quest is for a reason, and there is an ultimate goal I WILL get to.
Though I can not travel the world for a year and take the time to humble myself and build myself back up again, I am very grateful for my wide eyes and vivacious spirit. I believe I will find my ultimate dream and am trying hard to feel and taste every bit of my eating praying and loving.
I look at my great examples in life- my family, and see their companionships and directions. I feel like some of your quests and understandings have come so much easier to you than mine have to me. Why? I don’t know. Sometimes I get very frustrated with myself. BUT, I am learning to be grateful that my spirit is an adventurous and curious one. I have been sanding down my edges a lot over the past year and have come so far already. I am thrilled at what more I have in store for me.
The medicine man in the movie said you are supposed to smile completely. With your mouth, your mind all the way down to your liver. I hope and pray each of you, my precious family are smiling with your livers. J
Movie recommendation- Eat Pray Love is a thumbs up!
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