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

[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.)