Eat Pray Love

I think the only person who knows the real reason why I’m here in Germany this year is my Mom, and even she doesn’t know the whole story.

I wish I could say there was some grand academic drive or some other reason as equally reputable or worthy of Fulbright’s name, but the real reason I’m here is the book Eat, Pray, Love.

In the summer of 2009 I, like most almost-seniors-in-college, was freaking out about jobs. Where was I going to live?! What was I going to do!? I had to decide the fate of the REST OF MY LIFE and the direction of my FOREVER FUTURE at that very moment. The concept was as scary as it was unrealistic.  At the time, however, the feeling was very real. And very very scary.

All the while, as I was contemplating completely un-plannable things like If apply to jobs this job in this city, then what if I get stuck there, and I don’t really want to raise my kids in that school district (who thinks this as a 22 year old—really?) my mom kept asking me the very simple question “What do you WANT to do?”.

As simple as that question is, I think we all know how challenging it is to really answer and answer honestly.

What we want should be dictated by what makes us happy—right? Well, that gets complicated when what makes us happy is so intricately tied to someone else’s happiness too.

I am happy when my friends are happy. I am happy when I please my parents. I am happy when my professors are impressed with my work. So what makes ME happy? Well… I guess it depends on what makes all those other important people in my life happy.

Even when you try to theoretically eliminate those people from your decision making… it just doesn’t work. The people that surround you are as much a part of YOU as you are to yourself.

So back to the summer of 2009…trying to decide what I wanted to do and being very unsuccessful at separating my happiness from the people who were so very important to me—my boyfriend, with whom I was painfully in love, in particular.

After a long, hot, heart-wrenching summer of mulling over my future and dealing with the absolute misery of being in love I finally got a much needed vacation and headed to an isolated island in South Carolina with my family.

This is when I finally picked up the book I’d been carrying around with me all summer. I’d heard a lot about it and was more curious to see what everyone was talking about than the actual content.

If you haven’t read it (or seen the movie) it starts out with writer, Elizabeth Gilbert, lying next to her husband of 7 years feeling very alone and wondering how she got there. 

In a moment of desperation and confusion she prays to God (or talks to him? She’s not very practiced at this—which should prove to everyone her desperation) and ask what should I do? Just tell me what to do!

As a back story for her desperation she describes herself this way:

”..I disappear into the person I love. I am the permeable membrane. If I love you, you can have my everything. You can have my time, my devotion, my ass, my money, my family, my dog, my dog's money, my dog's time--everything. If I love you, I will carry for you all your pain, I will assume for you all your debts (in every definition of the word), I will protect you from your own insecurity, I will project upon you all sorts of good qualities that you have never actually cultivated in yourself and I will buy Christmas presents for your entire family. I will give you the sun and the rain, and if they are not available, I will give you a sun check and a rain check. I will give you all this and more, until I get so exhausted and depleted that the only way I can recover my energy is by becoming infatuated with someone else.”

I found myself identifying with her pain, her confusion, her desperation, and more than anything her realization that her happiness was entirely entwined with someone else.

In the book she realizes she has never defined her OWN happiness; she has never found her SELF, so she decides to go on an adventure of self-discovery. She resolves to do the things she has always wanted to do and for some reason never got around to. She goes to Italy to eat, India to pray, and Indonesia to learn… but the book is not called Eat, Pray, Learn, so (not to ruin it for anyone) but you can guess what happens instead.

I found myself inspired by her independence, her drive, her courage to go and find herself, find her faith, and learn to what makes her—Elizabeth Gilbert, and no one else—happy.

One of the criticisms of the book, however, is that she, as a 30 year old, is just selfish and irresponsible. 

You can’t just drop everything and jet off like that! How selfish of her! What about her husband? What about her job? What about all the people that rely on her?

While I think most of those critics are probably just jealous bitter women who have been in that same lonely and desperate place but couldn’t drop everything and travel the world for a year—probably because it IS pretty irresponsible and very few people can actually afford to do that—I still see where they are coming from.

The older we get, the more people DO rely on us. The more intertwined we become with responsibility, families, husbands, wives, children… the deeper you get into real life, the less and less likely (slash less and less responsible) it becomes to be selfish and go on a quest for self discovery.

This is why we have our 20’s.  And I was about to throw my 20’s away by skipping along my revolutionary road to…what? A hypothetical marriage and kids? Who was I kidding…

I didn’t want to be 30 years old and wonder what I wanted. I didn’t want to wake up with 2 kids and think—I never got the chance to go to Greece…well, maybe when the kids are older we can go…

While I had the chance I needed to do something completely decided by ME, and only me. In a burst of energy and motivation I looked up the office number of my advisor and called him. I was surprised he picked up and the surprise almost shook my from my bravery, but I held on to that scrap of confidence…

“Hi, professor Kramer? Hey, it’s Meredith Freeman…great how are you?... yeah, so this is kind of random, but you mentioned last spring something about the Fulbright scholarship?...yeah…is it too late to apply?”

And that’s how I ended up here, but that’s just the beginning. There is a lot more of this story left to write, and I am about to go write it.  

Tomorrow, I will be in Rome. Alone. With my journal and my bible and a stomach ready for some delicious wine and pasta. I am about to have my own, official, Eat Pray, Love adventure in Italy. After that, I will meet up with my friends in Greece for Easter and a week of reflection, writing, and laying out on the beach.

Eat—check. Pray—check. Not sure about Love, but I’ll let you know when I get back.

So for now: Arrivederci! I’m off to Rome!