passages

I just read Eat, Pray, Love for our book club and I really enjoyed it. I liked the format, I liked the writing, and there was a lot of food for thought. I knew I had to get some of my favorite passages down here, lest I forget them immediately.

While on a road trip with a friend, the author mentions that she wishes she could write a petition to God. Her friend encourages her to do just that. So she pulls out a notebook and write down a most humble request -- what she really, really wants. She reads it to her friend, who nods her approval.

"I would sign that," she said.
I handed the petition over to her with a pen, but she was too busy driving, so she said, "No, let's say that I did just sign it. I signed it in my heart."
"Thank you, Iva. I appreciate your support."
"Now, who else would sign it?" she asked.
"My family. My mother and father. My sister."
"OK," she said. "They just did. Consider their names added. . . They're on the list now. Who else would sign it? Start naming names. . . Listen, Liz -- anybody can sign this petition. Do you understand that? Call on anyone, living or dead, and start collecting signatures."

The names spilled from me. They didn't stop spilling for almost an hour, as we drove across Kansas and my petition for peace stretched into page after invisible page of supporters. Iva kept confirming -- yes, he signed it, yes, she signed it -- and I became filled with a grand sense of protection, surrounded by the collective goodwill of so many mighty souls.

I just love this idea. It was such an incredibly supportive thing for her friend to come up with. Brilliant, really. And when you think about it, we surrounded by this kind of collective goodwill, we just have to remember that fact.

On being in Italy:

It's kind of a fairyland of language for me here. For someone who has always wanted to speak Italian, what could be better than Rome? It's like somebody invented a city just to suit my specifications, where everyone (even the children, even the taxi drivers, even the actors on the commercials!) speaks this magical language. It's like the whole society is conspiring to teach me Italian. They'll even print their newspapers in Italian while I'm here; they don't mind!

In this and other passages, she really captures the joy of learning a new language -- the way it feels like a whole new world is opening up to you. And I totally remember feeling amazed at the way little children spoke French!

I love the way she personifies depression and loneliness here:

Depression and Loneliness track me down after about ten days in Italy. . . I stop to lean against a balustrade and watch the sunset, and I get to thinking a little too much, and then my thinking turns to brooding, and that's when they catch up with me.

They come upon me all silent and menacing like Pinkerton Detectives, and they flank me -- Depression on my left, Loneliness on my right. They don't need to show their badges. I know these guys very well. We've been playing a cat-and-mouse game for years now. . . Then they frisk me. They empty my pockets of any joy I had been carrying there. Depression even confiscates my identity; but he always does that. Then Loneliness starts interrogating me, which I dread because it always goes on for hours. He's polite but relentless, and he always trips me up eventually. He asks if I have any reason to be happy that I know of.

I don't want to let them up the stairs to my apartment, either, but I know Depression, and he's got a billy club, so there's no stopping him from coming in if he decides that he wants to. . . Loneliness watches and sighs, then climbs into my bed and pulls the covers over himself, fully dressed, shoes and all. He's going to make me sleep with him again tonight, I just know it.

She obviously knows them well.
I found the following idea just brilliant:

I . . . reach for my most private notebook, which I keep next to my bed in case I'm ever in emergency trouble. I open it up. I find the first blank page. I write:

"I need your help."
Then I wait. After a little while, a response comes, in my own handwriting:
I'm right here. What can I do for you?
And here recommences my strangest and most secret conversation. Here, in this most private notebook, is where I talk to myself. . . I've found that voice in times of code-orange distress, and have learned that the best way for me to reach it is written conversation. . . Even during the worst of suffering, that calm, compassionate, affectionate and infinitely wise voice (who is maybe me, or maybe not exactly me) is always available for a conversation on paper at any time of day or night. . . This is what I find myself writing to myself on the page:

I'm here. I love you. . . There's nothing you can ever do to lose my love. . . I am stronger than Depression and I am braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.

. . . I find myself writing this comforting reminder at the bottom of the page:

Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a friend.

In the morning when I wake up, I can still smell a faint trace of Depression's lingering smoke, but he himself is nowhere to be seen. Somewhere during the night, he got up and left. And his buddy Loneliness beat it, too.

I need to try that!

The next morning in meditation, all my caustic old hateful thoughts come up again. I'm starting to think of them as irritating telemarketers, always calling at the most inopportune moments. . . When I tried this morning, after an hour or so of unhappy thinking, to dip back into my meditation, I took a new idea with me: compassion. I asked my heart if it could please infuse my soul with a more generous perspective on my mind's workings.

You can use spiritual exercises to help you overcome [destructive thoughts]. It's a sacrifice to let them go, of course. It's a loss of old habits, comforting old grudges and familiar vignettes. Of course this all takes practice and effort. . . It's constant vigilance and I want to do it. . . I repeat this vow about 700 times a day: I will not harbor unhealthy thoughts anymore. . . That is my mission, and it will never end.

I've never really tried meditation, but I am all too familiar with negative thoughts, negative self-talk. How about having more compassion with myself? Now there's a novel idea!

This is why I love books -- the recognition of familiar experience, the clever turns of phrase, the ideas they spark... and I am vowing to write more about books here. What are you reading now?