Eat + Pray + Love = Privilege

[wlotus]

Between Christmas and New Year's I read “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert over the course of two days. At first, the book annoyed the snot out of me. Here was yet another person who “found religion/spirituality” as a way to handle the pains she had suffered in life. Religion had not helped me deal with the pains I had suffered in life. In fact, in many ways religion/spirituality had made my pains worse. But I soon realized I had to stop reading the book as a way to look for answers for my life. The book was Gilbert’s story of what has worked for and happened to her, nothing more and nothing less. Once I took that approach, I was able to read without getting riled up. Much.

It’s interesting that not long after reading Gilbert’s book I read (this week) “Honeymoon with My Brother” by Franz Wisner: another book about people traveling the world in the wake of relationship trauma and in the process of figuring out who they were and what they wanted to do with their lives. How nice to be able to afford that luxury. You need to find yourself? Completely turn your back on your old, painful life and go live somewhere else in the world for a few months at a time while following your whims. I don’t begrudge them their travels; I merely wish I and all of the stressed, overworked, unfulfilled people I know also had the financial backing to be able to do such a thing. We could use a year or two of living by our whims in foreign lands to heal and figure ourselves out, too.

I saw the romance at the end of Gilbert's book coming from a mile away. How typical. This time “Stella” got her groove back with an older, affluent foreigner instead of with a barely legal, poor native.

Both Gilbert’s and Wisner’s books have something in common: privilege. The insights both gained were deep, of course, but the privilege in both people’s tales was so glaring, it tended to overshadow their personal growth. Let’s be real: the average person does not have a book advance (Gilbert) or a $70,000 bonus and hundreds of thousands in savings (Wisner) to propel them on their journeys of healing and self-discovery in foreign lands. The average person must fit in healing and self-discovery in fits and starts while still going to (or trying to change) that soul-numbing job/university, living in that house that reminds them of their ex, and trying to fulfill their obligations. Most of us cannot afford to push all of that aside to solely delve within ourselves for a year or two. More than personal memoirs, through my filters their books are testaments to the options money and privilege give to people who are suffering a personal crisis.

Comments

[bookchick.livejournal.com]

I've had this feeling when reading similar stories in the past, as well; I applaud your ability to at least see something in them, as I tend to figuratively throw the book against a wall.

[saladbar.livejournal.com]

Ha. I thought I was the only one that didn't like that book. Everyone I know *lurves* it. I thought I was being my nonreligious curmudgeon self.

[queen-in-autumn.livejournal.com]

I started "Eat Pray Love" when someone loaned it to me, and I had the same reaction: Gee, must be nice to be able to drop everything and travel the world for a year!

[pixiedash.livejournal.com]

I read Eat, Pray, Love too, and I absolutely adore the book. However, your points were not lost to me when I was reading it -- I thought the exact same things about privilege and how lucky the author must be to be able to just drop a year out of nowhere and live off of her savings. Still, though, I believe that spirituality can be appreciated among everyone, and these same experiences can be found even among the poor or the unprivileged. The meaning behind her journey was beautiful, regardless of how or what means she got there with.

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

After Gilbert hooked up with the Brazilian, she waxed poetic about just going with the flow of life's ups and downs and life being beautiful when a friend told her about her own relationship woes. "Spoken like someone who has had four orgasms before breakfast," was her friend's reply. I had the same thought when heading your comment. Right now you are basking in the well-deserved glow of some of your deepest dreams come true. Of *course* you are going to think life is beautiful in all of its manifestations, right now. :-)

[pixiedash.livejournal.com]

LOL Touche. Hehe. Very true. :) However, I didn't get here because I spent loads of money and relaxed under the Tuscany sun or revelled in the joys of an Indonesian master. It took a lot of work to get here. I'm poor as dirt, and I'll probably most likely always be poor as dirt. It took me a long time to get here. While it took Gilbert a year to get to her place, through her spiritual travel (quite literally), it took me the last 10 years of my life. I don't have privilege, but I also know happiness doesn't have to come with privilege. And I also know many poor, destitute people (some of them my very clients, in fact) who are "happy" despite not having enough to eat, or never leaving their home town, or being in between jobs. Journeys are journeys alike. Us less financially fortunate just gotta work a little harder to find our own Italy, India, and Indonesia.

[pixiedash.livejournal.com]

(I did find it slightly gratuitous on Gilbert's part, though, that the woman is this naturally beautiful, blond-haired, blue-eyed westerner in the first place. Must be nice to have your biggest problem be divorcing a man you no longer love. She did seem a bit naive in the ways of the world to me. However, I did appreciate her innocence and lack of world experiences, and she seems to have good intentions towards people.)

[lapetitediva.livejournal.com]

...The average person must fit in healing and self-discovery in fits and starts while still going to (or trying to change) that soul-numbing job/university, living in that house that reminds them of their ex, and trying to fulfill their obligations. Most of us cannot afford to push all of that aside to solely delve within ourselves for a year or two. More than personal memoirs, through my filters their books are testaments to the options money and privilege give to people who are suffering a personal crisis.

**nodding** Very spot-on. I've often thought of how nice it would be to have the financial means to just break down. Being poor, I can't do that, I have to force myself to get up, anyway, because if I don't work, I don't make money, and without money, I can't pay the bills or rent. But if I were independently wealthy, or could sponge off rich parents, I could go somewhat off the deep without having to worry about the financial consequences.

[shutterbug.livejournal.com]

Funny, someone recommended Eat, Pray, Love to me recently as well. All through my vacation I picked it up in the bookstore and put it back down, having not read any of it. The synopsis had me feeling awkward about it, but I couldn't pinpoint why. I still have intentions to attempt reading it, but I think I wanna try borrowing it rather than buying it.

[llahearn.livejournal.com]

I checked out the book, but couldn't read it for the very reasons you discuss. I'm just so confused as to why people are finding it so fabulous....

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

I don't get it, either. Other than cynicism that my life hasn't had a happy ending, I couldn't figure out why I wasn't in love with it until after I read Wisner's book, where the privilege is much more in your face.

[ladyofthelog.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I read it a while ago - not knowing about the hype, I spotted it in Ye Local Indie Bookstore and gave it to my bff Anny because the author had traveled to Indonesia (where Anny was born & spent her childhood) and Italy (where she studied abroad). It was ok if you were reading about it more as a spiritual travelogue than as something that should have any bearing on your own life.

I don't know. If we're talking about spiritual memoiry type things, I'd take Anne Lamott over Gilbert any day. (It seems unlikely to me that you've missed AL in your more-comprehensive-than-me-spiritual-reading, but if you have, Traveling Mercies and Operating Instructions are my favorites.)

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

Believe it or not, though Lamott's name sounds familiar, I have never read any of her books! I'll put her on my list of authors to check out.

I thoroughly enjoyed and completely related to Sue Monk Kidd's spiritual memoir The Dance of the Dissident Daughter. That book changed my life; after reading it I was finally able to give myself permission to ask the very hard questions about Christianity and whether it worked for me.

[blueidgrl.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU. I have the exact same reaction to books like this - well OF COURSE I can change my life, have an altering spiritual experience AND find true love...all I need is a few hundred thousand in the bank so I don't have to deal with reality for 12 months! I felt the same way about that House in Tuscany (or whatever is was) book that came out a few years ago that was so popular. Um yes...I can leave my fabulous apartment in California and buy a small estate in Tuscany on a whim. Piece of cake! Can't everyone?

Blech.

[dulcinbradbury.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the book, but, I can understand that response. However, I've known people who didn't have that kind of luxury who up & left. It usually involved working their way through their travels & typically not glamourous jobs either. Sweeping floors, taking out trash, busing tables.

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

I have heard of people doing that, too. Gilbert didn't have to do that, though. She could go where she wanted, stay where she wanted, eat and drink what she wanted, and not worry about needing to take on a non-glamorous job in order to survive. She probably did some volunteer work in the ashram, because ashrams usually require that of whoever stays there. But it wasn't a matter of survival for her like it was for the people you know.

[dulcinbradbury.livejournal.com]

Oh I know that. I just meant that... it's possible to travel the world & try to "find yourself" without having several thousand dollars in the bank. A lot of people will write off things they'd like to do without considering how they could make them possible. (I've been guilty of that myself, in truth.)

[verucas-chaos.livejournal.com]

I haven't been able to pick this book up and read it for the exact reason you mention in your first paragraph. I felt the same way about Conversations with God in the beginning (no pun intended), but eventually I warmed up to it.

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

I haven't read Conversations With God for that reason. Just the title seems pretentious to me. But I may get around to it and be pleasantly surprised by it.

Ditto

[denimpeanut.livejournal.com]

Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road (ISBN 1-550-22548-0) is a 2002 memoir by Neil Peart, the drummer and main lyricist for the Canadian progressive rock band Rush. It chronicled Peart's motorcycle trips throughout North America in the late 1990s, as he contemplated his life and came to terms with his grief over the deaths of his only daughter, Selena, and his wife, Jackie in 1997 and 1998, respectively.

A friend gave me this book. I've read parts of it off and on, and while it's a good book, it's the same thing that you mentioned. Peart certainly had the bucks to just take off and he managed to heal. Even got married again!

I had 4 deaths, 3 breakups, 2 move-outs, a serious illness of a new boyfriend and much more, in the space of 2 1/2 years. But I had to work. Grieve in between that. No wonder I'm still working on some of those things...

Re: Ditto

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

Wow...yeah, you're doing wonderfully to still be functioning at all after all of that. ::hugs::

Eat,Pray,Love

[(Anonymous)]

I always have doubts about books that are really popular in the mainstream. Spiritual memoirs are tricky....since they are so personal, there is generally a good chance that they won't match your own experience. Like in Eat,Pray,Love; I don't have her money thus I read her memoir more as "fiction". Overall, I wasn't wowed by it. The Eat part's writing lacked drive. The other two sections were better. HOwever,there were pieces that I found interesting like how different religions classify things. Christianity says "original sin" where as others say "imbalance" or "ignorance". I prefer the later two. -Frida

Re: Eat,Pray,Love

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

You're right about the lack of energy in the writing; I hadn't thought of that.

If it wasn't for the fact the group was reading it, I may not have read it, too...or maybe not until a year or two had passed and the hype over the book had died down. Like you, I tend to avoid fads, and the underwhelming nature of this book is why. The masses tend to be easily impressed. That said, I *wanted* to like the book, because some people I think highly of have been singing its praises. Instead, I was almost embarrassed to find I did not like it.

[(Anonymous)]

Wow...You posted this a year ago...anyway...

I read it too, recommended by a friend. I liked the writing and the author's ability to tell a compelling story, yet I too thought, wow, I'd like to be able to take a year off and sort through my sh!t.

I think deep spiritual insights sometimes are a class privilege. Wasn't the Buddha rich? St. Francis of Assisi's father was rich. So was St. Theresa of Avila's family. I'm sure there are more examples, I'm just to tired to dig them up right now.

wlotus: if you still read comments on old posts...a group of PUMAs are getting together for a meet-up in NYC on January 10, 2009. Go over to The Confluence and look for madamab.

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

Believe it or not, I have had a chance to take a year off and sort through my shit. I'm one of the unemployed who has cash reserves enough to survive through these lean times. It is a class privilege, on the one hand; I made good money before I was laid off. On the other hand, my cash reserves are from my own hard work and wise investing, not from wealthy family. :-)

A NYC PUMA meetup sounds interesting! Thanks for the heads up!

[love-story.livejournal.com]

Late to this post, but thank you for the link as I enjoyed reading your thoughts on the book as well! Particularly liked the This time “Stella” got her groove back with an older, affluent foreigner instead of with a barely legal, poor native part. HA. I agree 100%.

The thing is, it really is great when people's broken-heart stories have a happy-ever-after ending with their true soulmate, discovered only after (and perhaps because of) working through the pain of a previous failed relationship. And I absolutely believe in the possibility of such happy endings. But in this particular story it irks me because I still don't feel like she learned anything by the end of the book -- except how to think even MORE about herself, which appears to me to have been her biggest problem to begin with. The book might as well have been titled "Me, ME, MEEEEEE!!"

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

Thank YOU for the laugh on the suggested title of the book! LOL!!!!

I have to admit that at the time I wrote this entry, I was still smarting from being unhappily single for years, in spite of some disappointing (and recent, at the time I made this post) forays into the dating realm. Hence the "Stella" snark. Then again, I would probably say the same today, knowing myself. :-)