Finding Balance

As I reached the final chapter in Elizabeth’s journey I close my high school experience. The last part is love, which I have come to the conclusion, is a fundamental parting everyone’s life and we need it in our journey to finding happiness.

I am talking the love to yourself and to others, when it comes to love I would not consider myself an expert since I am still trying to learn how to love myself and I have not love anyone romantically. But I am learning everyday how to be better.

There is a part in this chapter where she writes the “Instructions for freedom” so I decided to choose the ones that will work for me :

-       You have just climbed up and above the roof. There is nothing between you and the Infinite. Now, let go.

-       With all your heart, forgive him, FORGIVE YOURSELF, and let him go.

-       When the karma of a relationship is done, only love remains. It’s safe. Let go.

I have somehow fear since I am soon to enter university, which means new fresh possibilities, I am scared of failure but I think I have grown since the first day I started school. That scare girl just like Elizabeth when she decided to take her journey and we both came back being mature and finding the right balance in our lives.

I really enjoyed the book and I absolutely recommended to anyone, just wanderlust when your life is feeling like it is not making any sense.

eat PRAY love

India / Brazil

This "chapter" of the book came in the right time; I started the first page as the plane was taking of to Rio de Janeiro. The since of being on a trip always gives me some sort of hope, like going to a new place full of strangers where nobody knows me or knows anything about me.

I was going to visit my best friend, back in France we had some little rituals like taking the bus everyday at the same time or ordering the same thing in our favorite restaurant; they remained me of a union like "to attach yourself to a task at hand with ox like discipline."(Pg 160) Those kind of rituals helped me loose my mind and kept me in a somehow balance, just like the yoga for Elizabeth.

I believe that we need to relive our minds and body, at this point of the book the character is in peace with her body and with her ancient relationships but she still needs to find herself and God; one of the main reasons I am a wanderlust is the feeling of serenity walking down in a crowded street where I am on my own gives me. 

" The potency of the enlightened consciousness."(Pg 163) When you find someone in your life that is able to pass on their knowledge their state of grace in order to help you understand your purpose in life and learn it's meaning. I think sometimes we are quite lucky in life and we are able to find our Gurus, even if it is in the weirdest way possible.

As I had say in the last post I greatly recommend this book. In my personal opinion the Pray part of the book is quite slow and it is not my favorite, But I understand that her relationship with God is one of the main reasons she decides to make this trip and I do believe spirituality is important for a healthy life.

But the dialogs she has with herself help you understand the book more and they surely makes it more enjoyable.

Eat Pray Love. Elizabeth Gilbert

I really like the book, because i find it refreshing in the sense of self-knowledge when you break up with someone. The fact that you can be with yourself trying to connect with your inner purpose.

" Il bel far niente means the beauty of doing nothing." (pg80) So far this book has been just amazing, I am in the part of the book when the character is in Italy also known as the eating part and the descriptions are just so realistic I found myself mouthwatering at an imaginary gelato or wishing I was in Rome walking down a piazza.

The character is quite relatable, she is trying to find herself and in the same time you question your own decisions. Your main objective is to find out if you are happy with yourself and understanding that you are the only one that can improve your life. 

If you are searching for a easy read or going through a tough breakup this is the book for you.

It is the second time I read this book and even now, I am finding myself awed by the book and inspired in a very different manner than before. The first time I was not very fond of the romantic part of it and i really did not really care about how her partners had affected her decisions, I cared more on how she decided to travel around and being in charge of her own life. 

But this time I realized that those decisions are the echoes of her relationships and that she was not feeling like herself anymore and I think sometimes we all need to take a break of our own lives." He looks at you like you're someone he's never met before, much less someone he once loved with high passion." (page 25)

Demian

I stumbled across this book by accident, i saw it in a boy's table and decide to start reading it, the first  sentences where quite catchy so i continued on my reading. After convincing the boy to lend me the book I discovered that my life was in the same point as Sinclair, I was triying to step out of the dark world that have been this months in Mexico and go back to my world of light that living alone in Europe meant.

The first quote that spoke to me was 

"If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us." It all happend on the first day of school when this guy started talking to me and just turned my world upside down, he represented all the things I hate about myself, he was lazy and stubburn just a nightmare for my perfectionist mind but there was something about him that made me like him in a way I have never liked anyone before. Some how i could see beyond his flaws and just accept him.

In the book when Sinclair meets Demian his world just turns upside down, S. starts questioning everything and just wants to become a better person but he is quite intriged by Demian who is this misterius young guy that seems like an angel, they talk about life and how S. can change if he stops hanging out with his friend.

 The second quote is "I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me." This talked to me because i consider myself as a seeker I love learning and every aspect that comes with it just the fact of learning and filling myself with this, I like learning with travels and stories that people told me.

"Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again. That is why every man's story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of consideration. In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross." This is for me the most important one, i believe that we are all unique and we don't really understand each other unless we let our hearts open when we feel like; sometimes people will betray us and break our hearts to pieces but that is how we know we have our very best and that we actually learn something.

I loved the book it helped me realize that only I am able to create my world of light and happiness there is no Demian out there searching for me to understand the meaning of life but I can be someone's angel or demon and try to help them sorting  their own dissasters out.

When your life makes an unexpected turn

As I was writing in my last post Taylor has a “perfect life”, but one day she funds out that her husband has being lying to her and that they have been broke and financially unstable for almost a year. The book continues narrating in a really relax language that uses daily expressions like lame, or casual contractions; I believe this makes it easier for the reader to understand.

We can understand the feeling of un empowerment that the protagonist feels as she sees her life falling apart, the way her anxieties come back in the way she eats Oreo cookies and just sits and cry in the kitchen floor, this kind of scenes are quite common in the life of a person that suffers from an eating disorder.

She tries her best to continue with her life but it suddenly hits her  “A life that seems as fragile as a sand castle” with this metaphor we understand that all of the sudden it does not seems as easy as it was in the beginning when she thought that her perfect life would last forever and did not contemplate that all her privileges could and would end at some point.

But we tend to hide what is happening to us and try to deny everything “I’d rather die than let everyone know we’re struggling financially.” We are most of the time scared of the opinion of the people next to us and we have this idea that if we want to be accepted we must fulfill everyone’s expectation.

I am really enjoying the book and I cannot wait to see how Taylor solves the financial problem and if she accepts the change.

Mrs. Perfect by Jane Porter

I really like this book, it explains the life of an A type personality mom, the way it is written it makes it more comfortable to read, just a light easy way.

 It starts in the end of summer with our protagonist Taylor the first phrase that catch my eye was "I know how to get things done." it reminded me of myself, I tend to be a controller just like her.

Jane uses lots of descriptions in this book like "her eyes look huge in her face, the skin pulled too taut across her cheekbones and jaw, ruining the effect of all her expensive work." this makes it easier for the reader to picture every single move as if you were in a movie.

Taylor's picture perfect life starts getting a little messy when she learns that her "perfect" husband has been lying to her for almost five months. I think creating an intriguing plot twist really helps; it started as suspicions of an affair and slowly building up to the reality with a middle kitchen confrontation. 

It also talks about our society and how media affects it "The most fashionable woman, the truly stylish women, are all thin." we have created a high standards for woman to reach, we need to be pretty, thin, desirable for man, intelligent (but not as the man that surround you), playful but not childish, sexy but innocent; this are just some of the examples of what society wants of a Mrs. Perfect.