Love and Marriage

Not long after moving to India, I started getting emails from friends back home: "Have you read Eat Pray Love yet? You really should! -- the book totally reminds me of you."

Naturally intrigued, I finally bought a copy and started to read... then promptly got annoyed at everyone who thought this was me. Here's Elizabeth Gilbert -- the author, hysterically sobbing on her bathroom floor amidst the ruins of her terrible, failed marriage; who would rather travel than have children -- and everyone thinks this is me?!

Luckily I continued on in the book, and did start to see what people were talking about. Her adventures, her international passion, her search for deeper spirituality amidst her repeated "failed" attempts at meditation... and at the end of it all, finding peace with herself.

So perhaps it's timely that her new book, Committed, has just been published. Now engaged to a man she met and fell in love with during her international adventures, she uses the book as a vehicle to contemplate what marriage really means, as well as confronts her own fears about the institution.

I bought this book this morning at the airport bookstore, on my way to Delhi...and haven't been able to put it down since (one of the few times I was happy the flight is two hours!) Some parts had me laughing out loud...her self-deprecating humor is really quite witty. At the same time though, I was often annoyed by her air of self-importance (although as my yoga teacher often says: "Everyone is just a mirror to yourself. What annoys us in other people is really what annoys us about ourselves." And so it is.)

While I don't share her fears and sheer loathing of the institution of marriage, I did find her contemplation into it -- and research into its history -- quite fascinating (did you know that for centuries, the Church called marriage "evil" and actively tried to steer people from it?)

At times, I did have to laugh at some similarities... Here's one of my favorites: she's giving her fiance a list of her biggest character flaws, to ensure that he's "properly warned" in advance.

#3 of these is:

I have far more enthusiasm in life than I have actual energy. In my excitement, I routinely take on more than I can physically or emotionally handle, which causes me to break down in quite predictable displays of dramatic exhaustion. You will be the one burdened with the job of mopping me up every time I've overextended myself and then fallen apart. This will be unbelievably tedious. I apologize in advance.

Sounds a bit familiar ;)