Eat, Pray, Love: Some lasting impressions

As I said in my review, Eat, Pray, love left me really conflicted. There were aspects of the book I hated but, in amongst all that annoyed me or failed to convince, there were some reflections on life - mostly from Gilbert's time in an Indian ashram - that did make me stop and think for a while. Here are my favourites.

I got to thinking about how much time I spend in my life crashing around like a great gasping fish, either squirming away from some uncomfortable distress or flopping hungrily toward ever more pleasure. And I wondered whether it might serve me if I could learn to stay still and endure a bit more without always getting dragged along on the potholed road of circumstance.

There is another passage along similar lines that I failed to note down but which basically told the story of one of Gilbert's friends who was forever getting to a great place, looking around at the beauty or the amazing architecture and saying 'wow, I really must come back here one day' - totally failing to notice that she was there. Failing to live in the moment in other words, missing the here and now. I think I can take a valuable lesson from that!

And then, there was this one...

My Guru once said, 'you should never give yourself a chance to fall apart because, when you do, it becomes a tendency and it happens over and over again.

which really got me thinking. Should you stay strong and never fall apart, or do you sometimes need to hit rock bottom, let the demons out of the bottle as it were in order to start the climb back up again... I'm still pondering that one.