| Aug16 | Not really about Eat Pray Love |
I saw the movie adaptation of Eat Pray Love this weekend. The elevator pitch is that it’s a privileged New Yorker lady traveling to different parts of the world to find herself after her failed marriage. Gun to my head, I actually like the movie. But I understand all the criticisms. The main character just feels shallow, entitled and whiny; there’s a false sense of empowerment and feel-goods with no real advice for the heartbroken.
To me, the movie is high on the emotion and low in logic. You have to emotionally be at a point where you can tolerate listening to Julia Roberts live out beautiful travel fantasies and go on oddball spiritual journeys in order to deal with her divorce. I haven’t read the book but I have a strong gut feeling that the book does much better in fleshing out the characters and capturing the moments and the grittiness and moral ambiguity. The movie is a glossing over of the facts and its more of a fairy tale for the naive modern woman.
I did enjoy it though. I’m in a place where I can look back and see that it was a good decision to break up. Even though I was the one who got dumped, at some point each person has to decide to let go, to forge ahead on their own, to look after themselves first and trust that the other person and the rest of the world knows how to look after themselves. I’m glad that we broke up because things were already broken. Some of these things could be fixed trivial but others ran deep, deep into the structure and the foundation of the relationship. I am thankful for all the lessons I’ve learned as a result. Hence, it was enjoyable to watch a movie about a person breaking up and leading a fantastic fairy tale life, I’d like to believe I’ll have the same fairy tale one day.
It’s been about 8 months since we broke up. When people hear me mention my ex-girlfriend, they assume it’s far in the past. In a lot of ways, it is.
I asked a girl out the other day; first girl I asked out since I dated my ex. A disarmingly cute and creative girl that just charms the pants off of me (literally). I don’t know her that well, the chemistry hasn’t really been established between us but she’s beautiful both inside and out and distraction I would readily welcome. She hesitated in answering, for a variety of reasons. I think she hasn’t really looked at me in that way. I’d like this to be an easy and simple seasonal romance but things are not really set up to be that way. Playing with fire perhaps but I’m tempted to try asking her out again.