After I finished reading The Mayor of Casterbridge on the vacation, I immediately started reading Eat, Pray, Love by Liz Gilbert. I purchased this book for my e-reader right after I watched the movie. Now, a word about this practice... I realize that many teachers of English frown and turn their pointy noses up at the idea of "book set in film" and believe in some twisted, purist sense that true lovers of lit should never make comparisons between the books and their film versions. I have an excellent Greek word for that idea - it's "Hogwash." I really like being introduced to a book via a movie version. I am very visual, and a movie gives me a (teacher word coming - look out) "conceptual framework" for placing the book. In other words, it gives me a place in my brain upon which to hang the ideas in the book. This works well with teenagers also. When I teach Shakespeare, I show pieces of a movie along with the reading so that the kids can spend more imagination on the plot and less on setting and character because those images are already fixed in their minds.
Back to Liz Gilbert. I saw her on Oprah in 2007 when her book was published, and I thought she was moderately interesting, but didn't think I would care for her writing. The movie starring Julia Roberts was more interesting, so I Netflixed it this summer. Loved it! After a long and difficult, but perfectly pleasing year of teaching, I was intrigued by the first part of Liz Gilbert's journey in particular. Here's the summation: Gilbert was married young and later decided that she didn't want to be married any more. A falling out of love, if you will. Apparently, getting a divorce in New York is more difficult and more painful than removing a leaprous leg with nail scissors, particularly if one party is not in favor of the action. It took about 4 years to get the divorce. Yikes! During this time, Gilbert was lost, confused, ungrounded and miserable - just like any other normal human being would be. Long story short, she decided to take a year of her life to figure it all out. She started with 4 months in Italy. Actually, she had been to Bali previously for an article she was writing, met a medicine man who read her palm and was told she would eventually return. That's the end of her journey (Italy, India, Indonesia).
After all of this heartache and misery, Gilbert decides to spend 4 months in Italy to discover pleasure. Not a bad place to find pleasure. One of the ways she finds pleasure is through food, hence the first part of the title. She actually goes there to learn the language, but winds up finding a lot of pleasure in eating. But that's not the only place she finds pleasure, and I'm not talking about sex. Now, when it comes down to it, Americans are pretty horrible at enjoying themselves. According to Gilbert, we come from this uptight, Puritan, guilt-ridden background that makes us work really hard and criticize the idea of true relaxation. Imagine the executive on vacation who can't keep away from the blackberry long enough to go to the beach with his kids. I recognize this in myself. Anyway, Gilbert learns about the idea of "bel far niente" which is "the beauty of doing nothing." Here is what she says about the Italian idea of "bel far niente": "The beauty of doing nothing is the goal of all your work, the final accomplishment for which you are most highly congratulated. The more exquisitely and delightfully you can do nothing, the higher your life's achievement" (95). I love this idea. I read it (Chapter 17) to my husband and my kids. It was "food for thought" if you will.
Gilbert goes on to explain that we don't get this in American culture, and we have to be convinced that we deserve to take it easy. Think about American advertisements - "You deserve a break today" and "You've come a long way, baby!" Then we think, "Of course I deserve a break, so I'll work really hard (what!) at relaxing and overindulge in it and then experience excessive guilt because of it." This is not the way to experience "bel far niente." Experiencing this concept really comes down to asking yourself, "what would make me happy right now?" Sounds sort of selfish but it isn't because it generally incorporates the enjoyment of people you love. Long dinners around good food with good conversation and lots of laughter. Lazy afternoons of coffee and cake with your girlfriends. For me, when I think about the times that I have been most content, the scene usually incorporates my husband, my kids, my friends, yummy food, lots of laughter and great conversation. What it doesn't include is my twisted American sense of time management. How long do I have to spend here in this spot where I'm having fun before I have to get to the next task? This isn't pleasure; this isn't giving myself up to the moment.
So what I took from the first part of Gilbert's book is this - Work hard, but don't look to work as my reward. Be present in the moment of pleasure without mentally running to the next thing I "have to do." Banish guilt. This idea right here is so strong in my life that sometimes I have a hard time praying because I think I should be multi-tasking while I am spending time with God. Ridiculous! Be fully present with the people I love and give them my attention so that I can enjoy them unhindered and they can do the same. Chew! Incorporate "bel far niente" into my life and slow down enough to truly get it. Not a bad lesson for 1/3 of a book I didn't want to read in the first place.
My next post will take us to Liz's trip to India.
Gilbert, Elizabeth. Eat, pray, love: one woman's search for everything across Italy, India and Indonesia. New York: Viking, 2006.
Back to Liz Gilbert. I saw her on Oprah in 2007 when her book was published, and I thought she was moderately interesting, but didn't think I would care for her writing. The movie starring Julia Roberts was more interesting, so I Netflixed it this summer. Loved it! After a long and difficult, but perfectly pleasing year of teaching, I was intrigued by the first part of Liz Gilbert's journey in particular. Here's the summation: Gilbert was married young and later decided that she didn't want to be married any more. A falling out of love, if you will. Apparently, getting a divorce in New York is more difficult and more painful than removing a leaprous leg with nail scissors, particularly if one party is not in favor of the action. It took about 4 years to get the divorce. Yikes! During this time, Gilbert was lost, confused, ungrounded and miserable - just like any other normal human being would be. Long story short, she decided to take a year of her life to figure it all out. She started with 4 months in Italy. Actually, she had been to Bali previously for an article she was writing, met a medicine man who read her palm and was told she would eventually return. That's the end of her journey (Italy, India, Indonesia).
After all of this heartache and misery, Gilbert decides to spend 4 months in Italy to discover pleasure. Not a bad place to find pleasure. One of the ways she finds pleasure is through food, hence the first part of the title. She actually goes there to learn the language, but winds up finding a lot of pleasure in eating. But that's not the only place she finds pleasure, and I'm not talking about sex. Now, when it comes down to it, Americans are pretty horrible at enjoying themselves. According to Gilbert, we come from this uptight, Puritan, guilt-ridden background that makes us work really hard and criticize the idea of true relaxation. Imagine the executive on vacation who can't keep away from the blackberry long enough to go to the beach with his kids. I recognize this in myself. Anyway, Gilbert learns about the idea of "bel far niente" which is "the beauty of doing nothing." Here is what she says about the Italian idea of "bel far niente": "The beauty of doing nothing is the goal of all your work, the final accomplishment for which you are most highly congratulated. The more exquisitely and delightfully you can do nothing, the higher your life's achievement" (95). I love this idea. I read it (Chapter 17) to my husband and my kids. It was "food for thought" if you will.
Gilbert goes on to explain that we don't get this in American culture, and we have to be convinced that we deserve to take it easy. Think about American advertisements - "You deserve a break today" and "You've come a long way, baby!" Then we think, "Of course I deserve a break, so I'll work really hard (what!) at relaxing and overindulge in it and then experience excessive guilt because of it." This is not the way to experience "bel far niente." Experiencing this concept really comes down to asking yourself, "what would make me happy right now?" Sounds sort of selfish but it isn't because it generally incorporates the enjoyment of people you love. Long dinners around good food with good conversation and lots of laughter. Lazy afternoons of coffee and cake with your girlfriends. For me, when I think about the times that I have been most content, the scene usually incorporates my husband, my kids, my friends, yummy food, lots of laughter and great conversation. What it doesn't include is my twisted American sense of time management. How long do I have to spend here in this spot where I'm having fun before I have to get to the next task? This isn't pleasure; this isn't giving myself up to the moment.
So what I took from the first part of Gilbert's book is this - Work hard, but don't look to work as my reward. Be present in the moment of pleasure without mentally running to the next thing I "have to do." Banish guilt. This idea right here is so strong in my life that sometimes I have a hard time praying because I think I should be multi-tasking while I am spending time with God. Ridiculous! Be fully present with the people I love and give them my attention so that I can enjoy them unhindered and they can do the same. Chew! Incorporate "bel far niente" into my life and slow down enough to truly get it. Not a bad lesson for 1/3 of a book I didn't want to read in the first place.
My next post will take us to Liz's trip to India.
Gilbert, Elizabeth. Eat, pray, love: one woman's search for everything across Italy, India and Indonesia. New York: Viking, 2006.
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