One, particularly awesome day I got to munch on pumpkin pie with my grandpa while watching Eat, Pray, Love. For awhile now this movie has come to my mind, inspiring several thoughts. Now, I turn to the blog to handle these accumulated ramblings.
Quick summary, Eat, Pray Love is a story about a woman who wakes up one day wondering, “Who am I and where the heck did my life go?” She leaves her husband and goes on a journey to Italy, India and Bali, basically to rediscover herself. Obviously, large chunks of the story are missing but you’ll have to watch the movie for that.
The movie struck a chord with me because I’m not the regular get married and have four kids girl. I’ve never really found that appealing, at least not yet. So, I could totally imagine waking up one day and feeling the same way as the woman in the movie (which is not good, believe me, I know). Beyond that, it’s also been bugging me because often I feel the same desire to break off from the “standard.”
To throw in some literary aspect here, Jane Austen once wrote, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” Today, we could change that to, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a young person in possession of good wits, must go to college, work a respectable job, get married, and have two children.” It can even be illustrated at family parties where the three things people ask you are 1) What school are you at? 2) Where are you working? and 3) Do I hear wedding bells? Ding, dong, no! Thus, you see where my rebelliousness comes in.
Sometimes, I just want to throw off the expectations of a one way society, go to Bali or wherever and discover what life means to me. It sounds appealing and, the other day, while already being bogged down by school and work, it sounded like pure bliss. Once I put on my more rational mind set however, I realized that this would be a big mistake (thank goodness for the rational side).
Why would it be? First of all, what in the world does discovering yourself even mean? And what is the likelihood that you’re going to find it in Bali, or anywhere else? Secondly, if the whole point of going to some other country is to be rebellious and defy society, better think again. Society already has that fit into its sneaky little mold too. It’s called, “discovering yourself by being single for a certain length of time before marriage.” Obnoxious is what I call it.
The only thing that I’ve found that makes any sense so far is this: losing yourself. Truly the exact opposite of what society preaches and I’m ashamed to admit that I forgot it. What does the Bible say? Lose yourself. Lose yourself in God and, through Him, in others, in loving those around you. Let go of the you. And not in the selfish way that says, “My life is now all about you, so you better make me proud” or any of the other tricky ways of claiming to make it about someone else when it’s really still about you. No, I mean this equation: I love God, God made people and loves each and everyone of them, therefore I love each and every one of them. Now how can I best serve God and those around me?
I’m not claiming that I live this way, far from it. But it’s something I’ve been pondering lately: two, amusingly polar opposite ideas.
