Eat, Pray, Love - Searching Oneself

I was told, if you want to know whether THAT someone is really THE ONE that you could spend your lifetime with, grab your bag and go for a trip together. If, at the end of the trip, both of you remain yearning for each other’s company, rest assured THAT someone is THE ONE.

Life is, indeed, an endless trip. Literally. Along the way, at various stops in life, we bump into strangers, make friends and decisions. As we are the driver of our life, we determine which direction we are going and how we are going. Once these have been identified, we pick who and what we will bring along, using the concept of 3Ps – Practicality, Proactivity and Patience.

This brings me to Elizabeth Gilbert (Liz) and her “Eat, Pray, Love” (saya suka terjemahan buku ini di dalam Bahasa Indonesia bertajuk "Makan, Doa, Cinta"). Suddenly, her search becomes my business.

She came into the picture when I reaffirmed my gut feelings to someone that he IS one of my soulmates.

I must say I have broken a few beautiful hearts but I am not saying that with proud or grudge. Hurting someone so dear only hurts us back. Somehow, as life has better purpose for us to fulfill, there are relationships that we have to remodel into lasting spiritual friendships. They live forever in our heart. My brief encounters with my soulmates have enlightened me the real soul inside this façade and ignited the real potentials in me. For being my soulmates, they are like bitter pills I have to swallow every now and then, the beacons lighting up vast lands and open seas strange to me so I could stay true to myself.

“People think your soul mate is your perfect fit and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, someone who shows you everything that hold you back, the person who brings you to your attention so you can change your life.

A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.

A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master”

~ Richard from Texas to Liz

Having broken these hearts, I caged mine in return, out of fear that it, too, will be broken by another. With God’s blessings (because I do not have such strong willpower to undo sorrows I caused them nor strength to overcome my own), my soulmates held my hands wading through my life, instilled in me that I deserve the best, so I must seek my happiness and live up my purpose in life – with or without them. Because of them, I am truly, genuinely happier now.

“Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it”

~ Liz

Because of them, I am ready to love and be loved, with the kind of “love that moves the sun and the other stars” (Liz) and I am, even, willing to be alone and lonely, at times because I would “never again use another person’s body or emotions as a scratching post for [my] own unfulfilled yearnings” (Liz).

Liz’s book, for me, is liberating. It is not about celebrating romance or comical side of life of a divorcee. This is a book about searching oneself, understanding why one behaves like one and finding the real meaning of one being given a life by The Almighty.

If you are reading this book for chicklit-kind of romance, you’d be disappointed but if you could pass through the rigorous explanation on Hinduism, Yoga and all, you would find a startling gem at the end of it. That is, life isn’t all about finding someone to love but it is about finding oneself and loving it (with all its imperfections – acknowledgment of this would normally propel one to improve oneself), giving meaning to everything and everyone around us. If we could do that, we find love right at our doorstep, every single day in our lifetime.

This book is Liz’s memoir and interestingly, it could well serve as a relevant psychology material reading as it shows how our past experiences, as early as toddler, could shape who we are today and amazingly teaches us that we could always rewrite our Lifescript. We are after all, with God’s guidance and grace, are the master of our destiny.

Universal as it can be, Liz shares one of the most important truths on mankind. Liz writes, “I met an old lady once, almost a hundred years old, and she told me, 'There are only two questions that humans have ever fought over, all through history: how much do you love me? And, who’s in charge?’”. Indeed, insecurity and doubts are men’s best enemies as they are capable of wrecking a relationship, drowning one’s future, silencing democracy and in the end, killing oneself, painfully, bit by bit.

Although I adore Julie Roberts, I don’t think watching a movie would be sufficient to immerse oneself with the wonderfulness of Liz’s book. It’s soul-searching worth reading!

My trip has been quite a rugged one. If I am blessed with THE ONE, I pray THE ONE that rivals a companionship between the Late Paul Newman and his beloved, Joanne Woodward. God please guide me, for I do not wish to take up ‘passengers’ along the trip, like the one of Dame Liz Taylor.

p.s. Oh, Joanne Woodward, Dame Liz Taylor and yours truly share the same birth date. History tends to repeat itself so I should wisely choose whose history I wish to repeat.