Today I celebrate.
I choose to begin my new blog today with Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert mainly because today marks my own celebration of love and this book attempts to conclude with finding love, a place where spirituality wins when the mind steps aside to allow love to dominate. The thought is a constant one for me lately. (Check my previous post on Always and Forever). But maybe also because it’s Ramadan and the three activities are in the Ramadani spirit ☺ (if you allow yourself to consider the love here as love of god)
Don’t be fooled by my choice though. Spirituality never gets to me. It’s not only lack of faith. My mind just quickly races to try to find logic whenever my ‘spirit’ even attempts to transcend. The book was chosen by a group member, and accepted by me because of the lack of books in Kuwaiti bookshops. I think the Italian setting of the first chapter, devoted to eating and fountains, must’ve been the bait.
I don’t mind spirituality. I actually applaud people who can achieve it. But I always have this smirk when reading or hearing of people’s experiences with this world beyond our physical and rational reach. It’s not mockery exactly. Ok maybe it’s close to mockery. ‘Suckers’ is the word that my mind races to use, but that same mind checks itself because, after all, being judgmental isn’t a vice I willingly allow. This is an activity that Gilbert does a lot in her book: conversing with her brain. She actually picks up her notebook and writes things like “help me please” and after a pause, the notebook writes back “I am here for you and I love you.” This is no Ouigi Board stuff. She realizes that it is her own self that is telling her to persevere and that she is consciously writing those words with her own hands. But the whole schizophrenic behavior that manifests itself in her act of writing as an attempt to reach out to the strength that is within her … it’s just another one of those things that invite that smirk.
I didn’t mind the first part that is set in Italy. I mean who in their right mind would mind Italy? She describes their fountains and their food and a little bit of their history. That wasn’t bad. But then when she moves to India I just find myself losing interest completely. She spends her days chanting a certain mantra and scrubbing the floor. The same mantra. The same floor. And this is supposed to be her path to God. If so, then it’s such a boring path. After that she goes to Indonesia, as she claims, to find some sort of balance. She finds love instead. Maybe that would’ve been expected. The book’s title already told me that the last stop after eating and praying is loving. But is that it? Is that what a woman’s search for everything (a subtitle found on the front cover) amount to? Finding the person you love? So we eat and pray in order to be lead to love? And not even the spiritual heavenly love which I would expect in a book or prayers, but earthly love? Not even love of oneself, but love of a man, when the journey itself was started as an attempt to cleanse herself from the negative vibes caused by a recent divorce from another man.
Skeptical as I am to how the book ends, I still see it as the best way to begin a new blog started on a day I celebrate love. I took part of her journey after all. I visited Italy. I ate their pizza. I loved their ice-cream. And I adored their fountains.
And I love.
Isn’t WordPress amazing?
I wish I could advocate the argument that women do not seek earthly love, but right now, I’m in no position to do so.
And we all love.
I haven’t read the book but I can see why it might have disappointed you.
Love can be manifested in more ways than we can think of.
Love for oneself, for family, for God, for home, for art, for a person.
What’s important is that you keep loving…whatever it is, just keep loving.
Edith Piaf was once asked what advice she would give to a woman, a young girl, and a child. Her answer to all those questions was “Love”.
Gorgeous post Hanan.
A great lady who is a “surrogate mother” to me (and used to be a teacher by profession) took me into hand when I was this fresh off the Kuwaiti private school boat little semi-dandified girl of 19 and taught me to scrub toilets and bathrooms. Actually, she made me do it when. I didn’t want to and was kinda P.O’d LOL. But that imprint of bathroom scrubbing never left me, not because it was supposed to be the key to my initiation and entry into some kind of rarified secret spiritual world. But because I realized that even the dirtiest, most mundane of chores or acts could be the most honorable and loving when performed from the place in one’s heart that is pure and completely selfless. To me, whatever “spirituality” may be, surely lies in the quality of the Sisyphean acts one performs on a day to day basis for their loved ones, or even for themselves out of love. Like J.D. Salinger’s Zooey said to Franny who had lost herself in a confused semi-suicidal funk over the point of things and the meaninglessness of “spirituality”: “You do it for the Fat Lady.”
It was one of the greatest lessons and experiences anyone has ever taught me personally. I never believed nor bought the idea that “spirituality” lies in running off to an ashram to seek enlightenment – as appealingly chic and glamorous as the idea may be. And excuse me, but what the hell does finding romantic love with a man have to do with finding spiritual love on a supposedly spiritual quest? The two are separate things and I am already put off the book because I am tired of the cheap and popular idea being sold over and over that romantic love is the ultimate Willy Wonka golden ticket and is what you get if you suffer enough. Like it’s the pot at the end of the rainbow that we have to chase and will solve all our problems. I now firmly believes that flighty and dreamy romance is not the answer to lack of love for oneself and the perceived emptiness of one’s own soul, nor is it the thing that will compensate for a lack of self respect or personal dignity. So I totally agree with your point about the woman’s search for love. It sounds like a sellout and so superficial (I have not read it I know. But there. There I go being all judgmental on you ;p )
I am reading a superb book right now and I thought of you today as I read. Azadeh Moaveni’s “Lipstick Jihad: A memoir of growing up Iranian in America and American in Iran”. Highly recommended if you haven’t read it already. It fits me perfectly, and totally tweaked a chord in me (The half breed American/Kuwaiti I am)
Sorry for my little tirade
Mabrook on your beautiful and elegant new blog
Gratz on the new blog, hope to see your own domain soon
I love how wordpress is making you write more
I haven’t started reading the book yet. I was always against it because it’s recommended by Britney Spears (check back cover..) and … it’s enough that I let Oprah choose what i read. Allowing Britney to do that will be just horrible.
I’m not making sense, am I? I haven’t slept. I love that you love. It’s cute.
amethystos: I’m liking wordpress so far. Change is always good I guess.
F.: Just by quoting Piaf, I became your fan.
Ms. Baker: Your comments are always inspirational. Thank you for sharing. I’ll check out Moaveni soon. I just have some kind of aversion against those survivor memoirs. They are becoming too commercialized and too many that they lose their initial non-fictional authenticity.
mjkout: Thanks and welcome to my blog. I have my own professional website but I guess for now wordpress has everything I want.
Maybe a third transformation to my own domain in the far future though
Hussain: This one is an absolute Oprah book. And for the same reasons I gave Mrs. Baker, those recommendation are running a bit too tedious for me.
wow traitors… it seems that i’m the only one left faithful to blogspot :p everyone else moved to wordpress, well except F.
i’m thinking of moving there just to give my blog a refreshing makeover
about the book
i saw Sou read it a while a go and said that it was good and i should read it but i never saw my self reading that kind of books, i don’t know i guess i’m not spiritually stable or something like that. i mean the whole spiritual, self journey meditating / educating and discovering your self doesn’t sound like some thing i would read. but who knows i might give it a try after all :p (not making sense? 3ady 6af 
)
anyways, miss u and hope that the relocation encourages you to post more
I tryed wordpress for 2 days and went back to blogspot, I don’t count it as a down grade rather that XP-ing the MOS…..!!!
I recomend this book by Audrey Niffenegger ” The Time Traveler’s Wife”
and re-re-welcome to Safat
cheers
I don’t mind spirituality. I actually applaud people who can achieve it. But I always have this smirk when reading or hearing of people’s experiences with this world beyond our physical and rational reach
Ahhh but guess what Foucault would be saying about you?
Logic is as much as a “construct” as “spiritual truths” (or any truths for that matter). And I would steer awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay from such a book. Maybe if I was tied to an electric chair with straps on my eyelids forcefully parting them, and someone turning the pages every 2 minutes then I would hold my breath until I die. Lol, I can read pop-culture but that’s just low.
Congrats on your new blog.
Finally wordpress? Copycat
I looove Italy too!
Everything about that country just “forces” you to love it even more!