Comment on Eat, Pray, Love

Gilbert lost favor with some in the book club because in the end, she finds love again. In her defense, Gilbert spent a year of her life doing nothing but trying to put the past behind her, working through her pain, reconnecting with her inner self, devoting the whole of her days to prayer, meaningful interaction, and soul-searching for truth and knowledge of how we fit into the universal scheme of things. Not many of us have the luxury of taking a year off to do this, which is why it can take us the better part of a lifetime to make the leaps she has made in just one year, to overcome the bitterness of a failed relationship, or to enlighten ourselves on a path of inner peace and happiness. It's not like she jumped from one relationship to another (although David was the epitome of a rebounder). Gilbert shunned going out to the party where she met Felipe, the Brazilian, but eventually gave in to the peer pressure to "get out and circulate." Then she kept a safe distance from him after they met; she didn't just plunge into a love affair, she led in with her big toe, one foot, then the other, slowly followed by body and soul. Sometimes no matter how hard we fight it, when the right love comes along, its power is too strong to deny. What does one gain in trying to fight it, instead of giving in to love? In our time, it Pollyannaish to be a romantic? Who are we to say that two persons from two different continents who found each other on a third continent weren't meant to be together? Isn't life about seeking happiness? Did not Thomas Jefferson recognize this when framing our constitutional right to "the pursuit of happiness?"