eat. pray. love. is it really that simple? can we really live just with these three things? is it all about simplicity? tonight a friend and i order some delicious italian food and netflixed this beautiful movie which i have now seen a total of 11 times, all in theaters except for tonight (it came out at the right time, okay?). watching it tonight was like watching it for the first time all over again, the movie is utterly breathtaking, the scenery, the words Julia Robert's speaks, the food, the dedication, the love, all of it.
about 9 months ago when i watched the film for my first time, my favorite quote was:
"A friend took me to the most amazing place the other day. It's called the Augusteum. Octavian Augustus built it to house his remains. When the barbarians came they trashed it a long with everything else. The great Augustus, Rome's first true great emperor. How could he have imagined that Rome, the whole world as far as he was concerned, would be in ruins. It's one of the quietest, loneliest places in Rome. The city has grown up around it over the centuries. It feels like a precious wound, a heartbreak you won't let go of because it hurts too good. We all want things to stay the same. Settle for living in misery because we're afraid of change, of things crumbling to ruins. Then I looked around to this place, at the chaos it has endured - the way it has been adapted, burned, pillaged and found a way to build itself back up again. And I was reassured, maybe my life hasn't been so chaotic, it's just the world that is, and the real trap is getting attached to any of it. Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation."
I remember sitting in the movie theater holding two beautiful brave best friends hands (aubree and kim aka my saviors) thinking ruin is a gift, the road to transformation. The quote had reminded me of my heartbreak i had just experienced, the wounds still so fresh and open and my god, so painful. wounds that i thought would never mend because they had been in our relationship for so long, like "a heartbreak i wouldn't let go off because it hurt so good." i had wanted everything to stay the same, regardless if i was in a messy yucky painful relationship because at the time i was so scared of change, i was so scared of self-growth i was scared of being "solo" (not like the song but the italian word alone). i repeated to myself over and over again ruin is a gift, good things will come. at the time i am not so sure if i believed any of that all, but saying it and hearing it was the most comfort i got those days.
but now re-watching eat pray love months later after true healing and transformation has taken place i have a new favorite:
"In the end, I've come to believe in something I call "The Physics of the Quest." A force in nature governed by laws as real as the laws of gravity. The rule of Quest Physics goes something like this: If you're brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting, which can be anything from your house to bitter, old resentments, and set out on a truth-seeking journey, either externally or internally, and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher and if you are prepared, most of all, to face and forgive some very difficult realities about yourself, then the truth will not be withheld from you."
This journey of single-hood and being "solo" has been the most precious beautiful painful lovely messy eye-opening experience of my whole life. Going from being the girl who never had a boyfriend, to the girl who was always with her boyfriend, to the girl with the broken heart was not fun one little bit. I wouldn't wish that much pain or heartache or self-growth on anyone!! But "leaving behind everything familiar and comforting and setting out on a truth-seeking journey, and being willing to regard everything that happened to me on that journey as a clue and accepting everyone through that journey as a teacher, and both facing and forgiving very difficult realities about myself" truly helped me find truth and beauty in my life.
As this single-hood journey may be coming to an end I never want to lose myself again, I never want to forget all i have learned about balance. About keeping me me and keeping my relationship with God as my top priority, and my family and friends at the top of that list as well. I am finally at peace with the love i once had and then once lost. Big deal so i fell in love with someone. that guy touched a place in my heart deeper than i thought i was capable of reaching. But that love i felt, is just the beginning, it was just a small taste of what's to come. Because i have the capacity to love the whole world.
yes i loved him, yes sometimes i missed him, but as Richard from Texas in Eat Love Pray says "So miss him. Send him some love and light every time you think about him, then drop it... if you clear out that space in your mind that you're using right now, you'll have a vacuum there, an open spot- a doorway. and guess what the universe will do with that doorway? It will rush in- God will rush in- and fill you with more love than you ever dreamed." So stop using your ex to block that door. Let it go. As cliche and silly as it may sound when you let go Richard from Texas is really right and besides "this is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried something." So my friends, it really is that simple, eat. love. pray.
