The unique gift of Eat, Pray, Love

I have a mirror over top my sink in my kitchen. From time to time I will admittedly use it as a post-it reminder board. One that is a steady visitor has the saying: “Be Realistic ~ Plan for a Miracle”. The other one that has been with me also for a long time is: “Today is the Greatest Day of My Life”. I find the unique gift in both of these post-it note reminders (tattered curled edges and all from the sink's humidity) is they always make me smile. O.K. actually I have quite a few more, like: “There are Angels assigned to listen to every one of our prayers”.

Often I will add “floater” post-it notes: These post-its stay for a few days or weeks. These can be anything from pay a bill to a book. The post-it that has been there for at least a year or longer now is Eat, Pray, Love book to read: that is what the note says, and I have to say that in the end the book was given to me as a gift from a friend who had read it.

I originally heard of the book through an email from a friend who mentioned it when telling me what books she was reading. This has got to be well over a year ago if not more. I saved the thought onto a reminder, because I have such a high level of regard for Hilary Rosenfeld on a professional basis (my friend in the email) who is an East Coast Costume Designer. I thought if Hilary was reading that book then I was going to read it too.

Time passes…..

More time passes….


I am in the local book store last Christmas and they have an assortment of books and collectibles with the signage “The perfect Unique Gift” or something to that effect.
I scanned the table to see what books they were promoting and there low and behold was the book title that had been living on the post-it note mirror over my sink. I picked it up and was reading the front jacket when two extremely well dressed, well groomed young women late twenties most likely, dressed up like they were in their late thirties (they will regret that like the rest of us ) and they were gift shopping like me. One of the two savvy shoppers picked up the book I was holding and this was their discussion: “Giggling” “Oh, that book forget it, just another mid life crisis story of a disgruntled woman”.

I put the book casually down, and picked up “Life with Morley”. It seemed forever in my mind how I was going to walk away from the table; I felt that the book I was waiting to read in my mind without knowing anything in advance about it, was to be likened to something such as Deepak Chopra in nature with spiritual lessons like he so amazingly does, only with Food, Prayer and Love. I honestly was stunned to hear the book I was waiting to read was referred to as a midlife crisis mixed in with a self indulgent, self-discovery of self.

Time passes….

The book I put down is now on the big screen as a Feature Film. Just a few weeks ago I was talking with a girlfriend and told her the story of how I have missed reading this book and she gifted me the book as she has read it. I am always amazed to see the translation from book to film, so I picked the book up to read it and got to page 6, and burst out laughing.

You see on page 6 the Author says that she is thirty-six years old. I flashed back to the two young women, me now giggling that they thought mid life was 36 years old. Then I stopped giggling and thought maybe they were right? So, I googled mid life crisis and after reading two pages on Wikipedia about mid life crisis with everyone from Freud to Betty Crocker giving his or her hypothesis, typically the age for a mid life crisis is 47 years old.

Also, mid life crisis does not exist in Japan or India.

So, that is as far as I have gotten in the book. It seems to be a wonderful read and I thoroughly look forward to get back to it. I thought about those two young women and how grateful I was to be who I was and where I am on my life journey. The power of youth and beauty can be intoxicating but you have to wait for the real inner yearning of self-acceptance to settle in. No matter how hard you try to be forty when you are thirty, it is really the only thing that cannot be hacked like identity fraud. You can look and walk like a person who is self realized but only you know yourself when you are there.

This sums up where I am on my path presently,

I am beautiful, You are beautiful, We are all beautiful.


Have a beautiful day,


Photo: 'passage way' PKM


Joy,

Rena

www.talktotheturtle