Wednesday 22 September 2010

Eat, Pray, Love

I have read so many reviews and heard so much about the new Julia Roberts film, Eat, Pray, Love in the last few weeks I'm not sure I really need to go to see it at all! Of course, in the end, I will go. If only to stay part of the conversation with my girlfriends over the next few weeks.

It's interesting, the Elizabeth Gilbert book on which the film is based was a book we read at my village book club when it first came out. I might even have been the one who introduced it having picked it up at an airport somewhere. The reviews from each of us, a dozen middle-class, middle-aged women, the perfect target audience, were mixed. For those of us who had relatively recently experienced our own 'bathroom floor moment' (the phrase, emerging into everyday speak, for that moment of realisation that every decision you ever made was a bad one) we could tap into the angst Gilbert suffered and empathasise with her journey. For those lucky enough not to have got there yet, or to have bypassed it completely, the book has a somewhat self-indulgent, slightly neurotic tone.

How many people, I don't believe it's only women who go through it, reach a point in their lives when suddenly (or through a more gradual dawning) they feel as though they haven't lived the life they wanted or planned for? How many people wake up one morning and realise they are married to the wrong person, in the wrong job or following the wrong dream? I think, or maybe I hope!, this is normal, absolutely normal. Most of us go through it at some point.

The really hard bit is what to do next. How do you get up from the bathroom floor, physically or metaphorically and change your life? Julai Roberts will, of course, show us the way. Sadly, we don't all have time, or money, to take off on a year's sabbatical of self-discovery.

So what's nearer home, closer to real life? I've been doing lots of work and thinking lately around 'Confidence'. It seems to be a recurring theme, both personally and organisationally. For me confidence has been the key to changing my life. Discovering at 40-something that I was living the life I thought I should live was hard. To realise that I am a people-pleaser, conforming to my parents' view of how to live my life, to my husband's and my childrens' view. To realise I had no idea what 'I' thought or wanted left in a quiet space alone for an hour was a terrifying moment. One I worked really hard to avoid completely for the next 3 years, with some success. Even now, as I type, I look at the words and I'm transported back to a darker place. I know now though that I have the key, although it can still be a stiff and awkward key, to change things. To move forward in MY chosen direction, taking those I love with me, leaving the chains behind.

So yes, I'll go see the film, preferably with a lot of friends and we'll spend the next few weeks over our Pinot Grigio unpicking our personal journeys....We might even learn something new about ourselves or each other! Julia Roberts, eat your heart out!

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