Read for Life【Eat, Pray, Love】
What is Eat Pray Love about?
It’s the story of the author Elizabeth Gilbert’s one-year journey. That year, she visited Italy, India and Indonesia to heal her broken physicality and spiritual state from divorce and toxic relationships. She spent three months in Italy, enjoying food (Eat) and experiencing the purest pleasure by meeting basic needs; then four months in India to find peace of mind (Pray), learn to slow down and feel the surrounding, thereby healing the wounds of the past; and finally to Indonesia, where the journey began and where she looked for balance between physical and mental states, and fell in love with a Brazilian man.”
“An individual can best achieve balance through experiencing a variety of relationships.”
This not only involves others, but also yourself. This healing journey and a year of self-exploration helped Elizabeth Gilbert to get closer to her heart, and more aware her true self.
Why you need a soul-searching trip?
In the beginning, I felt a bit repulsive reading this book, I was in disagreements with the author’s view on relationships. Before heading on her healing trip, she went through an intense relationship with a British man and only till it became too dysfunctional to handle, did she finally make up her mind to leave everything behind and embark. Although she fell in love with the Brazilian man and got married in the end of her trip, they were later divorced, and she was engaged in other romantic relationships once again. This cycle of relationships actually left me amazed and awed, but I think this also conveys Gilbert’s outlook on life. She desires to be a free soul — both physically and mentally — hoping that she will no longer be a servant of emotions, but rather follow her heart.
I think the biggest takeaway of Eat, Pray, Love is that
we all spend too little time taking care of our feelings and understanding our needs (whether it’s personal aspirations, or our mental and physical needs).
After the read, I started to wonder whether I should start working right away after university or go on a travel. I believe a trip of this kind will introduce new ideas and perspectives about life, so I asked myself “do I really need to enter the workforce straight away as the general societal standards expect, is this really what I want?”
My EPL Trip
The goal is to fulfil my EPL Trip before 30 ! And there are 3 countries I hope to visit:
🇳🇵Nepal: to immerse and be surrounded by mountains
🇧🇹 Bhutan: to look for a balance between humanity and Mother Nature
🇮🇳 India: a spiritual journey that discovers the true meaning of happiness
There are so many places I wish to visit, so there’s definitely going to be more EPL trips lying ahead. I look forward to fulfilling each trip and hope at that stage of life I am living with gratitude and a forward-looking mindset. I hope to experience each journey in a fully present state, so when I open my eyes, I am closer to yourself.
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