Eat, pray, love, sing, drink, float

Two forces have acted on me in the past couple of weeks. One was a long weekend at Rough River Lake with old (and a few new) friends. Another is the book I'm almost done with: Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. These forces are definitely related.

I first read about Eat, Pray, Love in O magazine, and immediately recommended it to my mother, because it's about a woman who has been through a lot, trying to figure out...everything. A bare-bones synopsis: E.G. (it has not escaped me that we have the same initals, and first name) spends a year traveling, four months each in Italy, India, and Indonesia (Bali). Italy is for pleasure (food, sleep, music), India is for devotion (meditation, mostly), and Indonesia is ostensibly for balancing the two (love encompasses both).

Now, a three-day trip to Rough River is pretty far from a year-long globe-circling quest for the self. However, I did remove myself from my normal habitat, and did things I rarely do, or haven't done in a while. I hardly read at all while I was there. Instead, I did all the things in the title to this post. Who knew drunken karaoke could be so renewing? In all seriousness, floating in the sun and then opening my eyes to a brilliant blue and green landscape did a lot for me. So did spending time with people I hadn't seen in two years, or haven't known as well as I could. I came back to Chicago, read a big chunk of Elizabeth Gilbert's book, and decided to attempt to work my way toward a) trying to create a little peace in myself and b) trying to recognize in everyone the ability (and deservedness) to be loved, to recognize that they're just another part of the universe, struggling and making mistakes, etc.

This has been a rather New Age-y post. You should read this book, too. It will make you feel all cosmic inside.