Ready to Eat, Pray, Love?

My favorite book of last year is coming to the big screen this weekend when Julia Roberts shows us all how to eat, pray and love. In honor of the book’s theme, falling back in love with your own life, I’m going to make a few suggestions for the upcoming week to get you pumped for opening night.


1. Eat. Since the book is really a feast of words, and since some of those words are about food, it’s time to embrace food as a sixth sense. Eat a dessert this week. No, Oreos are not a dessert. They are chalky, greasy things that we reach for when we’ve had a long day of work, and we are looking for a bit of comfort in all the wrong cupboards. A candy bar doesn’t count either, even if you’re like me and you’ve been off sweets for so long that you actually think that a chocolate bar is the equivalent of really great sex (or, if you’re a mother, a really long soak in a bath tub.)

Go into a store that still has a bell on the door and where you are greeted with smells that you haven’t sniffed since you were at your grandmother’s house on her baking day. Choose a sweet that is displayed behind a shiny glass case on silver trays and served on a doily. Only then have you met the essential requirements of this task. Don’t worry, this bit of indulgence will not send you into a diabetic coma—no matter what Jillian Michaels tells you. Once you’re finished with your dessert, call all your girlfriends and arrange to go to the best restaurant you can afford before the movie. You want a restaurant that evokes the imagery of the book, “The mushrooms here are like big thick sexy tongues, and the prosciutto drapes over pizzas like fine lace veil draping over a fancy lady’s hat. And of course there is the Bolognese sauce, which laughs disdainfully at any other idea of ragu.” And this time, enjoy the food—no showing your girlfriends how committed you are to your diet.

2. Pray. When I think back to my life prior to a husband, children and just adult responsibilities in general, the thing I miss most is the quiet. Now my life has no space between noises. I wake to the cat mewing to be let out, followed by the sound of my husband’s shower. Next comes the blow-dryer and the morning news, kids asking for missing shoes and the sound of my horn as I signal for the bus to wait for us. Then it’s the radio to work, phone calls and conversations, television and homework, baths and bedtime stories. Finally I fall into bed and drift asleep to the nature sounds playing on my alarm clock.

This is our week for empty space. If this means that we “go to the bathroom” for 45 minutes, then so be it, but for a few minutes this week we are going to listen to nothing, worry about nothing, and think of nothing. I’m not going to kid you. This is the toughest assignment of the week. You will have monkey-brain, your thoughts will jump around in no particular direction and you will be powerless to stop it. You’ll think of grocery lists, and appointments, you’ll wonder if you should paint the wall you’re staring at while you’re trying to enjoy silence. Elizabeth had the same problem. “Going into that meditation cave every day is supposed to be this time of divine communion, but I’ve been walking in there lately flinching in the way my dog used to flinch when she walked into the vet’s office (knowing that no matter how friendly everybody might be acting now, this whole thing was going to end with a sharp poke with a medical instrument.)” She overcame the problem in the same way you’re going to. Tell yourself, “Listen—I understand you’re a little frightened. But I promise, I’m not trying to annihilate you. I’m just trying to give you a place to rest. I love you.”

Enjoy your newfound moments of peace this week. My bet is that there won’t be too many of them.

3. Love. If you know anything about the book we’re celebrating it’s that we need to find balance in our lives. We can’t run around like a bunch of addicts, chasing our next high if we hope to stay off mood-altering medication. But we sometimes do just that. When we diet we restrict our food so much that we actually begin to believe that rice cakes don’t taste like sawdust, and strawberries are essentially little red balls of sugar. Or we are really, really good at the diet for about two days and then we dive into ding-dongs with the abandon of a child in a swimming pool. Then we beat ourselves up, running reel-to-reel tapes of how sad and pathetic we are. We work long hours, and go home with mom-guilt crushing our bones so much that we drag our children to the toy store without them even asking. Balance is tricky—and usually only achieved by those stout little Olympic gymnasts that can also spin like a top.

But this week we are going to try for a little balance. No beating ourselves up for flaws that are, in reality, minor and not life altering. You will work hard, but then you will allow yourself some down time. I will too. And then, we will all proceed to the movie theater where I hope to find balance crammed into a theater seat, next to my wonderful friends, sipping my first Coke in two weeks.