Self-Reliance

In Eat Pray Love, Gilbert quotes a section of the Bhagavad Gita as she tries to understand herself and how to liver her life, "...it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with imperfection" (95).

This stuck out to me immediately, making me think of the thoughts and ideas of Emerson. What most stuck in my mind was the idea of his that "imitation is suicide." This idea from the Bhagavad Gita seemed very similar to me, and I started to wonder how similar religions and philosophies can be. Both of these philosophies or faiths, whatever it is they can be classified as, express the idea that to imitate someone else is to lose a piece of yourself. Upon making this discovery, I started to think that many religions have some of the same basic ideas, and maybe they're not all as different as we view them. There are thin strands connecting different people's beliefs together, and it seems that they all may be part of one huge web. The middle is the spot where all of the basic ideas are the same, and as it branches out in different directions, the ideas get farther and farther apart. Maybe religions are all different because of the people that designed them, but the basis and the reason we came upon them are all the same.

I then began to analyze some of Liz's journey from the transcendentalist point of view. I viewed her as very self-reliant, setting out into the world on her own to make discoveries about herself and her faith. I found extreme strength in her to be able to leave her life behind and focus solely on herself. She plans to do exactly what she loves for one year. Her plan is to first travel to Italy where she will learn a language that is beautiful but that she has no practical use for. She vows to eat everything appealing to her, and not to worry about her appearance or weight gain. She wants to learn to enjoy life for herself without thinking about how other people view her. Next, she will travel to India to stay in an Ashram and discover her faith. She will spend time praying with herself and with God. Whether she is really having a conversation with God is unknown; she may be getting all of her discoveries purely from within herself. Finally, she will travel to Bali, where her plan is to learn spirituality from a medicine man named Ketut. She will explore new ideas and learn more about herself than she ever thought possible.

Just now, I was also reminded of The Awakening, which I had really disliked. I thought that the main character was selfish because she was giving up on her family and her life. In the end, she committed suicide because she could not face the decision of whether to stay with her family or to pursue her art. I found this to be an extremely weak action, but I do think that it is completely different from the actions of Liz in Eat Pray Love. The similarities are obvious. These women set out to find themselves by leaving everything they know behind them. The difference is that Edna, the protagonist of The Awakening, cannot make a decision while Liz is steadfast in what she desires to do. Liz knows the consequences of her decision and the people that she is hurting, but she knows that it is more important for her to find herself before she can focus on other people. Others know her plan, and she does not string anyone along as she travels on her path to self discovery. Because of this, I connect much more with the journey of Liz than of Edna. I think that Liz's journey was a very positive journey and she made a lot of important discoveries about herself and her faith.