Elizabeth Gilbert's Blog, page 90
February 18, 2014
JUST FYI, everyone — the lovely quote I posted yesterday was written by Karen Sa…
JUST FYI, everyone — the lovely quote I posted yesterday was written by Karen Salmansohn…and you can buy a poster with this great statement by clicking below. Nice to be able to credit people appropriately with their own greatness! Thanks, Karen.
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Hi @[227291194019670:274:Elizabeth Gilbert] – One of my fans recognized the words on a poster you just shared as words I'm known for – because they're from 2 of my books & a poster I sell in my shop – they're copyrighted because it's on a poster I sell! Love for you to delete your friend's version! Thanks so much! I love your work – and designed a poster for your beautiful words! Will share here as well! xoKaren
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Reading STERN MEN in Malta…so wonderful!
Reading STERN MEN in Malta…so wonderful!
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Hi, Liz!
Sun, Sea and your Stern men … in Malta:) xxx
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THE SIGNATURE OF ALL THINGS in Hebrew at last!
THE SIGNATURE OF ALL THINGS in Hebrew at last!
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Now in Hebrew – Shalom from Israel <3
& Thank You Liz 
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February 17, 2014
A friend of this page shared this today, and I thought it was very sweet. A gene…
A friend of this page shared this today, and I thought it was very sweet. A generous-hearted reminder for people like me, who never really let ourselves off the hook for mistakes. (I know I'm the only one who does that, right? Right?)
Be good to you,
LG
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So sweet!
So sweet!
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What Sundays are good for in Knoxville, TN…
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February 16, 2014
This lovely ad for THE SIGNATURE OF ALL THINGS is on a full page of this week’s…
This lovely ad for THE SIGNATURE OF ALL THINGS is on a full page of this week's issue of The New Yorker magazine. So nice to see!
And you can click here for more on the novel:
Heart,
LG
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“DON’T CAST A SPELL OVER YOURSELF AND IMAGINE THAT THEY ARE DOING IT…” Dear O…
"DON'T CAST A SPELL OVER YOURSELF AND IMAGINE THAT THEY ARE DOING IT…"
Dear Ones —
I was so touched by everyone's responses to my post yesterday about the dangers of losing yourself in love.
Infatuation is a dangerous game, you guys, and an alluring one. Sounds like we've all been there. There is something so compelling about the idea of completely surrendering yourself over to another person. There is a vanishing of the self that happens in this process which can feel so delicious at the beginning (who doesn't want to escape the self?) but which also comes with this potentially disastrous side effect: You have now completely given over your power to another human being.
After which, as Scooby Doo would say: "Ruh-roh."
We often call this process "falling in love". But whenever you have give over all your power to somebody else, you have actually fallen under a spell, which is not quite the same thing as love. Here's the curious part, though — that person (the object of your infatuation) did not cast a spell over you; YOU ACTUALLY CAST A SPELL OVER YOURSELF. You fell in love with an idea about love, and let yourself become enchanted, and even blinded, by it. You blinded yourself. Because bewitchment in infatuation always comes from within, from your own imagination, and generally has little do to do with the actual truth or circumstances of the other person.
Waking up from that bewitchment can be a horror show. What follows next is the crash — disappointment, depression, rage, shame, withdrawal…or even, as we discussed yesterday, a desire to end one's own life, because we decided that we must live or die by the other person.
I am reading a novel from 1946 right now by an author named J.B Priestly, and he speaks beautifully about the dangers of infatuation. I just stumbled the other day on the most gorgeous passage on this subject, and I wanted to share it with you all.
In the novel, a young man named Gregory has become obsessed with an entire family called the Alingtons, and an older fellow named Jock is warning Gregory about the dangerous path of infatuation he's taking, emotionally.
Jock says, about the Alingtons: "You mustn't make them stand for more than they ought to stand for. You mustn't turn them into symbols…The Alingtons are an amusing, rather clever, very charming family, and I'm fond of them all. But don't try to make them add up to anything more than that. Don't turn them, somewhere at the back of your mind, into something they aren't, and wouldn't pretend to be. Don't make everything stand or fall by them. SWITCH OFF THE MAGIC, WHICH COMES FROM YOU AND NOT FROM THEM. DON'T CAST A SPELL OVER YOURSELF AND IMAGINE THAT THEY'RE DOING IT." (emphasis mine.)
Then Gregory asks if Jock he is being warned him about the Alingtons — if there is something dark in this family's collective character.
Jock replies: "Not warning against them. Warning against you in relation to them. You can go a long way — and give us something good in return — if you travel easily and lightly, seeing people as they are, just as people and not as symbolic figures, and not leaving parts of yourself behind, frozen in some enchantment."
I highlighted the entire page.
This is what I used to do in my life, whenever I become infatuated with anyone (and I've done it with friends as well as lovers): I have turned people into symbols of something larger and more magical than they are, thus putting a spell on myself about them. Leaving myself frozen in enchantment. And also, I may add, I did those people a great disservice, by not permitting them to simply be themselves — flawed, lovely, normal human beings. Because when they failed to deliver on my dream (how COULD they deliver on my dream?) the whole relationship fell apart. And then it got ugly.
Don't do it, you guys.
Wake from your dream, switch off the seductive internal magic, look around you.
Real love — healthy love — is waiting for you somewhere, if you can just keep your eyes open.
Heart,
LG
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February 15, 2014
LET ME TRY TO GET THIS RIGHT. I’ve been thinking for the last few weeks about s…
LET ME TRY TO GET THIS RIGHT.
I've been thinking for the last few weeks about something that happened to me recently when I was in France on book tour, and I've been trying to figure out if I can tell the story properly and appropriately, because it stuck with me in such a big way.
I did a public reading in Paris, and afterwards, when I was signing books, a gorgeous young woman with a face full of light and wit approached me. We chatted for a bit, and she asked me to sign her copy of EAT PRAY LOVE. Then she got very serious and asked if we could speak privately for a moment. She shared that, several years earlier, my book had carried her through an incredibly difficult time in her life. She had fallen into a grave depression, wasn't eating, couldn't sleep, had become haunted by despair. Then she said, with tears in her eyes, "I was even considering killing myself."
Of course I was horrified to hear this, and I took her by the hand and began to make the supportive sounds you make when someone has shared something so distressing. I said, "I am so sorry…and I am so glad you stayed with us and din't extinguish your beautiful life."
Then she said, with a kind of wry bewilderment: "But it was over a MAN!" Her eyes grew wide and amazed. She blinked away the tears, looking like someone who was just waking up from a bad dream. "Can you believe that? Can you believe I was actually considering killing myself over a MAN?!"
The way she said "over a MAN?!", she might as well have said, "over a BURRITO?!"
Like it was the height of comic absurdity.
And then she burst out laughing. Not a crazy-person laugh, not a bitter laugh, but a real and satisfying laugh — even an exhilarating laugh. It was delightful and contagious and it came out of nowhere. It seemed to surprise her as much as it surprised me. Then I started laughing, too.
Which is insane, because thirty seconds earlier, we had been talking about thoughts of suicide, and there is absolutely nothing funny about that subject (which is why I have debated sharing this story at all)…except that there was something so magnificent and sudden and divine in that moment of unexpected shared laughter. Because I have been there, too — in that same dark place she had been. For the same dumb reason.
And the absurdity was just so striking — that this young vibrant, intelligent, gorgeous person had truly considered throwing away her life and the world…over a MAN?
And that I had once done the same?
And that other people do the same?
That people can lose themselves so fully every day — over men, over women…?
That we would cast away our lives, our joy, our futures, our everything, our gifts, our light…over a mere PERSON?
You guys, we couldn't stop laughing. It was the strangest thing. We laughed and laughed, until we cried again.
It's like, in that moment, we saw our lives from some great distance, the way the gods might see us: Ridiculous and beautiful. Captivated by all the wrong stuff. All the deepest sorrows and loses of our hearts? Just silly. The pain we take so seriously? Just temporary. The power we give to others? Nonsense. When compared to the magnificent miracle of our own remarkable lives? Just absurd.
Please understand: It's not that — in that moment — we were carelessly dismissing or diminishing the notion of heartbreak and suffering. It was just that we saw it correctly, at last. In its true perspective.
"Don't give yourself away like that again," I said to her. "Not to anyone or anything."
"Don't worry," she said. "I won't."
"Promise me," I said.
We promised each other.
It was the best moment of my year so far.
I sincerely hope I told this story right.
Love,
LG
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:)
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February 14, 2014
A nice Q&A with the great Maria Shriver… Curious how you guys would have answ…
A nice Q&A with the great Maria Shriver…
Curious how you guys would have answered these questions.
Happy day!
LG
Tell Me More: Elizabeth Gilbert – NBC News
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Author Elizabeth Gilbert inspired readers worldwide with her 2006 memoir “Eat, Pray, Love. Her most recent novel, “The Signature of All Things,” is a critica…
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