Right up front, I will advise that this week’s column is a bit of a stray from my regular scrape of words on skunks, spiders, dogs, and chocolate.
This is where you can jump off if you like, and return next week for the usual script that will include my version of a recent trip I took to the big city.
But at this moment I am on the “Eat, Pray, Love” train and in my foreseeable future, I will not be getting off.
After all, Elizabeth Gilbert did the write the book just for me. I understand that some people would rather stick a fork in their eyeball than read it, and that’s okay too.
I’m on my second go ‘round of the paperback, crossing over at “Attraversiamo” on page 331 right back upon the Introduction in one fluid sweep—and this time armed with a highlighter to mark all the passages that were light bulb moments. Truth be told, I’ve also been to see the movie three times within a week, and I suspect I just might go back again.
And if I could afford it, I would buy the book for every woman I know who has an open mind—and for one man in particular who would definitely benefit from the read, given his current trajectory.
Rarely do I become so infatuated with a book—or a movie for that matter.
The last time I was in movie “gaga” was when “Titanic” hit the screen in 1997. I think I saw it four times. Before that, it was “The Lion King” in 1994. It’s the only movie I’ve ever been to in the ‘Cine5’ theatre where, on first viewing, the audience stood up, clapped, and cheered at the end.
So here I am in unchartered waters where my ship hit an iceberg and the circle of married life cracked and blew my heart wide open.
I’d bought the book when it was first published over three years ago, but put it on a shelf and never picked it up again until a month and a half ago when I was about to lose myself to the flies of sadness that were constantly swirling around in my mind.
There was a day when I would have rather eaten live tarantulas than give way to this path of change, but as I am discovering every day since I’ve been on the “Eat, Pray, Love” train, the road is one that rises ever so gently to meet me when I give the Universe a chance to show me what is possible.
"You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That's the only thing you should be trying to control."
Ms Gilbert’s philosophies have opened my eyes and my soul to hope, and at the very least have helped save me from wallowing endlessly in a pity party that begins and ends with the sentence, “I can not imagine my life without you in it.”
This is not to say for a minute that I don’t still have a broken heart. I do. But now I can live with it.
I am learning to give that “hurt and pinch” some light and love and then drop it. It’s not easy, and on occasion I still go for a drive in my truck and cry big crocodile tears, or mow my lawn and pretend my soon-to-be ex-spouse is every blade of grass.
But no longer am I willing to let those emotions be the energy vampires in my day-to-day world. Life is too short and I love myself too much to lose another day’s grace in a dark room full of self-loathing.
And I say “Thank You” out loud a lot. I’m not even sure to whom or to what I am saying it, but I say it anyway and especially when the moment is seemingly about to make me a victim of own optimism.
I have discovered that it is my word.
Robert Frost used three to sum up everything he learned about life and he’s right. “Life goes on.”
My future is paved with better days.
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