i didn’t want to read this book. not really. i know it’s a bestseller, & usually that’s enough of a reason to hate a book. i prefer the NY Times Notables, personally. why is this book so loved? i wanted to know.
well. when gilbert’s character finds herself in a pool of her own snot & tears, she uses clarity of reasoning, a very reasonable approach indeed, to make the patheticness of her situation more palatable. i did not intend to pity gilbert, pitiful as some of her moments were. her willingness to show the multifaceted experience of growing the hell up makes her a warrior to me. it figures she’s a cancer, which she reveals toward the end of the book.
gilbert is constant in reflecting the inner truth of her spiritual practices, the immediacy of her environment, & the interplay between these. she juggles the gravity of divine truth, her dependence upon it, the pressing questions of how she got to where she is, & where she is trying to go. these questions repeat more & more in her self-dialogue as she integrates her new knowledge, reconciling ancient spiritual axioms with her daily habits, thoughts, & acts, interpreting these for the reader (& for herself–she is playing the role of spiritual teacher after all!). her writing marks a path of constant reorientation into her changing world, her changing self whose magnanimous growth leaves her dizzy & breathless.
gilbert’s gleaming transparency of emotion & reasoning is blinding in its brightness. i thought her inner dialogue was goofy. then again, being a student of buddhism myself, stumbling along in stilettos along the cobblestone path of enlightenment, i am starting to appreciate goofiness more & more because the heaviness of life obstacles necessitates it. i was surprised to find that my discomfort at her emotional messiness was worth it.
the first page i dogeared in the book is page 20, the moment when gilbert realizes her relationship with her soon-to-be-ex-husband is “very, very over.” her mixed feelings over her divorce, her marriage, & the state of her life in general are outlined in detail as they jell, morph, & transform her throughout the story. her agony became mine every time she fought with her husband, mentioned their divorce lawyers, or reflected on her guilt at leaving the marriage.
on the same page, the obsessive rebound dude, David, shows up. i capitalize David because gilbert is OBSESSED with him. in that way that only makes sense if a person knows what addiction is: a downward spiral of crazymaking needs that go unmet with just the person who will ignore, starve, & bleed you completely. once again, sickeningly familiar to me. i’m glad she acknowledged being “addicted” to him; it validated the ways in which i related to her story, her ugly dilemmas. the reluctant decisions to do things right even though it almost killed her. the myriad ways she fed herself to starve her addictions.
the only method to this madness that i could identify was the story’s organization into 108 pieces. it seemed that the only constant to the craft of this work was emotional transparency, a continuous comparison between where she came from, where she’s going, & what she’s grateful for along the journey.
gilbert finds that gratitude brings more blessings & less suffering her way & that the harder she works at herself, the more extreme her emotional process becomes. her ability to hang with the torture (often self-inflicted, but torture nevertheless) makes the cliché of her divorce & self-revelation interesting.
transparency is a good word in describing this book. she flags everythign she’s doing: i m going to cry here, i’m going to give you a lesson here; i’m going to make a joke using pop references here. her deliberateness has an odd confidence to it. the narrator is thick.