Journey
Eat, Pray, Love – Affluent, whiny white woman talks about herself as she travels through three “I” countries: Italy, India, and Indonesia.
I have several issues with Elizabeth Gilbert’s New York Times best seller. Can you tell?
First and foremost, how many women in their 30s and 40s – even if they have the money to do so – can just pick up and travel around the world for a whole year? Not a whole lot. Some combination of job, husband/partner, children, and family or community responsibilities would preclude such a venture.
OK, so what?
Now, Gilbert’s tale becomes a fantasy story.
Undoubtedly, I say this with more than a wee bit of envy. At the same time, I have no desire to toss aside my real life and my children and my commitments to travel the world right now.
That said, I am still compelled to read Eat, Pray, Love.
Why?
You could argue that I am just another whiny white woman (albeit decidedly not an affluent one), and you would not be inaccurate.
It is not Gilbert’s whimsical travel to the three “I” countries that intrigues me so much. Rather, it is the topics she examines and discusses. The ones other than herself and her failed relationships. And, yes, I have gone through a stressful divorce and a powerful, intense relationship that ended in complete and utter disaster, too. So, I can relate to her on those two accounts. But, it is the concepts of faith, spirituality, God, self, and purpose that intrigue me far more.
And I am a sucker for the journey myth.
In high school, I wrote a paper arguing that Peter Matthiessen’s book The Snow Leopard was a modern day journey myth. Matthiessen went hiking through the mountains of Nepal and Tibet, ostensibly in search of the elusive snow leopard, but in actuality trying to come to terms with the death of his young wife from cancer.
In the end, are these two books really all that different? They both deal with loss and grief and self-identity. Two American writers approach loss and life in ways most average Americans would never be able to. I mean, who can just pick up and leave home and travel the world or hike the Himalayas? Matthiessen left a young son behind. Gilbert – in an odd stroke of timing -- did not have a husband, children, house, or job to worry about at the time she set off on her journey. Granted, she had an advance for her forthcoming book to help her cover her expenses. Something you or I would probably lack.
As I walked around our local hilltop cemetery this morning – bolstered by the sun, the doe and her two fawns, the hummingbirds, the rabbit, the lumbering woodchuck, and the butterflies, tracing a path I have taken hundreds, if not thousands, of times before – I realized that I am the kind of person who thinks Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim of Tinker Creek constitutes a journey myth. Even though she didn’t go anywhere. Maybe because she didn’t go anywhere?
Perhaps Joseph Campbell – one of my dream dinner party companions – might look askance at my assessment. How can there be a journey myth without the journey?
My point, I think, is that in order to make an internal journey, to experience the shifting of our internal tectonic plates, we do not always have to take an external, physical journey. We do not have to travel to Italy, India, or Indonesia or climb the Himalayan mountains in order to have insight into ourselves and grow as human beings.
Thank God.
Sometimes, I would argue, we need go no further than our neighborhood, the nearby cemetery, some woods, a passing creek, a walking path, a park, a pond.
Does that mean we shouldn’t read books like Eat, Pray, Love or The Snow Leopard? No, of course not. Reading these books can always stir our minds, get us thinking. But the real ground work will be done elsewhere. In our everyday lives. On that early morning walk. Late afternoon bike ride. After dinner stroll. If only we move through our days with open eyes and ears and look around us and observe.
And open our hearts.
The real challenge in life lies not in finding some fantastical physical journey of mythic proportions, but rather in realizing the mythic proportions of our daily journeys.
I have several issues with Elizabeth Gilbert’s New York Times best seller. Can you tell?
First and foremost, how many women in their 30s and 40s – even if they have the money to do so – can just pick up and travel around the world for a whole year? Not a whole lot. Some combination of job, husband/partner, children, and family or community responsibilities would preclude such a venture.
OK, so what?
Now, Gilbert’s tale becomes a fantasy story.
Undoubtedly, I say this with more than a wee bit of envy. At the same time, I have no desire to toss aside my real life and my children and my commitments to travel the world right now.
That said, I am still compelled to read Eat, Pray, Love.
Why?
You could argue that I am just another whiny white woman (albeit decidedly not an affluent one), and you would not be inaccurate.
It is not Gilbert’s whimsical travel to the three “I” countries that intrigues me so much. Rather, it is the topics she examines and discusses. The ones other than herself and her failed relationships. And, yes, I have gone through a stressful divorce and a powerful, intense relationship that ended in complete and utter disaster, too. So, I can relate to her on those two accounts. But, it is the concepts of faith, spirituality, God, self, and purpose that intrigue me far more.
And I am a sucker for the journey myth.
In high school, I wrote a paper arguing that Peter Matthiessen’s book The Snow Leopard was a modern day journey myth. Matthiessen went hiking through the mountains of Nepal and Tibet, ostensibly in search of the elusive snow leopard, but in actuality trying to come to terms with the death of his young wife from cancer.
In the end, are these two books really all that different? They both deal with loss and grief and self-identity. Two American writers approach loss and life in ways most average Americans would never be able to. I mean, who can just pick up and leave home and travel the world or hike the Himalayas? Matthiessen left a young son behind. Gilbert – in an odd stroke of timing -- did not have a husband, children, house, or job to worry about at the time she set off on her journey. Granted, she had an advance for her forthcoming book to help her cover her expenses. Something you or I would probably lack.
As I walked around our local hilltop cemetery this morning – bolstered by the sun, the doe and her two fawns, the hummingbirds, the rabbit, the lumbering woodchuck, and the butterflies, tracing a path I have taken hundreds, if not thousands, of times before – I realized that I am the kind of person who thinks Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim of Tinker Creek constitutes a journey myth. Even though she didn’t go anywhere. Maybe because she didn’t go anywhere?
Perhaps Joseph Campbell – one of my dream dinner party companions – might look askance at my assessment. How can there be a journey myth without the journey?
My point, I think, is that in order to make an internal journey, to experience the shifting of our internal tectonic plates, we do not always have to take an external, physical journey. We do not have to travel to Italy, India, or Indonesia or climb the Himalayan mountains in order to have insight into ourselves and grow as human beings.
Thank God.
Sometimes, I would argue, we need go no further than our neighborhood, the nearby cemetery, some woods, a passing creek, a walking path, a park, a pond.
Does that mean we shouldn’t read books like Eat, Pray, Love or The Snow Leopard? No, of course not. Reading these books can always stir our minds, get us thinking. But the real ground work will be done elsewhere. In our everyday lives. On that early morning walk. Late afternoon bike ride. After dinner stroll. If only we move through our days with open eyes and ears and look around us and observe.
And open our hearts.
The real challenge in life lies not in finding some fantastical physical journey of mythic proportions, but rather in realizing the mythic proportions of our daily journeys.
posted by delta at 10:43 PM
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