Prompt 10

Like we said in class, “comparisons lead to unhappiness,” so I’m not going to compare “Indonesia” to “India” because I think Gilbert was at two very different places in her life and if I were to compare them, I would be comparing her progress in both sections, which are different, so I wont. But I will say that in “India,” Gilbert was going through a time if self-discovery. She was trying to find prayer and what that meant for her. In “Indonesia,” Gilbert eventually found love in Felipe from Brazil. I will say that in “India,” Gilbert was not spiritually and mentally there, but not psychologically. In “India,” it was Richard from Texas who guided her on the straight path and gave Gilbert words of wisdom along the way. “Taake the time you need to heal, but don’t forget to eventually share your heart with someone. Don’t make your life a monument to David or to your ex-husband” (189). “Forget about sight-seeing – you got the rest of your life for that. You’re on a spiritual journey, baby. Don’t cop out and only go halfway to your potential. You got a personal invitation from God here – you really gonna turn that away?” (171). I think his words helped her get through a lot in this chapter and even though this was about self-discovery, Richard helped her a lot along the road. In “Indonesia,” Gilbert started out questioning herself a lot, but in the end I feel that she truly understands happiness. In this section, Gilbert finally realized the key to her happiness: no words. “ The yogic sages say that all pain of a human life is caused by the words, as is all the joy. We create words to define our experience and those words bring attendant emotions that jerk us around like dogs on a leash…To stop talking for a while, then, is to attempt to strip away the power of words, to stop choking ourselves with words, to liberate ourselves from our suffocating mantras” (325). I truly think, at this point, Gilbert is done searching for what she has been looking for the entire book – happiness. It took her a long time, but I think she had to go through all of those trials and tribulations to finally find her destiny.