Eat, Pray, Heave

I think I must be an inherently bad person. At the very least, I am judgemental and sarcastic and often driven by fear and when I meet people who are really earnest and really content, I reflexively imagine hurling at their feet. See? Bad person.

So, last Friday, when I caught Elizabeth Gilbert on Oprah, I watched with a mixture of jealousy, admiration and disgust. Gilbert is the author of the much heralded Eat, Pray, Love, a memoir of her year-long travels through Italy, India and Indonesia. It's not surprising every country begins with 'I" since Gilbert unapologetically admits this journey was all about giving her wounded spirit the opportunity to experience pleasure (Italy), devotion (India) and a combination of the two (Bali). Gilbert is an intensely charming woman who has a flirty twinkle in her eye. She is soft-spoken but passionate and her book has been wildly successful.

Gilbert addressed her fear that a year of travel was too selfish by suggesting that through discovering her own happiness, she was doing a service to the world and everyone who encounters her. And it's true: I am sure people reading her book generally feel better about their lives than people who read this blog.

So, why did watching her on Oprah depress me? I know lots of people who have taken extended holidays. I guess I never heard of anyone being so richly rewarded for it. And while Gilbert argues that pleasure for the sake of pleasure is a lost value in North American society, I would argue that our culture is so fixated on the individual and creates such a false sense of entitlement that we are raising a generation that confuses excess with enjoyment, and luxury with reward.