Wurd Chunk: Happiness (Another eat, pray, love edition)

I receive email notifications of what is going to be appearing on the Oprah Winfrey Show.  Because I work I don't ever get to watch it but every now and then a guest or topic is going to be covered that makes me rearrange my work schedule so I can watch.  Tomorrow will be just that sort of day.

 Tomorrow Elizabeth Gilbert the author of eat, pray, love will be interviewed.  This book.  This gloriously wonderful book is one that might not have changed my life but changed my perspective.  Gilbert writes of her journey through divorce and into self discovery through travel and introspection in a way that's understanding and insightful.  Through reading this book I lived vicariously through her.  I'm a single Mom and am unable to go off and find myself while travelling in Italy, India and Indonesia like she does.  That is one of the joys of reading and the gifts of those who write.  We can live, albeit briefly, a life that we don't have, might not even want, but one that can show us the depths of experience that life can bring us.

"I keep remembering one of my Guru's teachings about happiness.  She says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe decend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough.  But that's not how happiness works.  Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight or it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it.  You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings.  And one you have acheived a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it."