I have just finished a rather good book called Eat, Pray, Love. It’s the
nonfiction account of one woman’s spiritual journey and it goes like this:
American journalist and author Elizabeth Gilbert, then 31, finds herself
sobbing on the bathroom floor one night and decides that, despite marital
stability and material comforts, she can no longer ignore the fact that
something is seriously amiss in her life. On the back of this uncomfortable
thought, she leaves her husband, endures a long, painful divorce and a messy
rebound, and heads off over the horizon, to Rome, India and Bali, to spend a
whole year thinking, really thinking, about what she wants out of life.
Mind you, you probably know this, since the chances are that you’ve read the
book. I think I might have been the last person in the whole world to read
Eat, Pray, Love, which, since it was published two years ago, has sold 5m
copies globally and has been translated into 30 languages.
What’s most interesting is how the word has spread. A publisher’s wet dream,
Eat, Pray, Love has been passed from woman to woman like the secret of life.
One week, three separate girlfriends fervently recommended it to me
(probably the reason I took so long to actually read it). The final
affirmation came from Julia Roberts, who was widely quoted as saying, “It’s
what I’m giving to all my girlfriends”, and who will star in the movie
version in 2010. Not bad for a bit of pop-fiction its author describes as “a
moment of self-indulgence I hoped my regular readers would forgive me for”.
The question is: why has it struck such a deep chord? A modern-day A Room of
One’s Own (a year of one’s own?), it seems to be a call to arms for
thirtysomething females who, despite appearing to have tiptop lives — the
job, the flat, the bloke, the handbags — are dogged by a vague spiritual
dread, a lingering “what if?”.
“I don’t think I knew how many of us had met our bathroom tiles at four in the
morning, asking, ‘How did I make such a mess of my life?’ ” says Gilbert,
now 39, who seems genuinely moved that her book has resonated so strongly.
“There is an invisible community of competent, decent women who have been
quietly, terribly sad about things that don’t show on the outside. People
respond to that over and over, the bathroom floor, because the bathroom is
the only place you can go and not be questioned. It’s becoming a shorthand
for that.”
Predictably, perhaps, there has been a backlash, and not only of the “rich
white woman goes to find enlightenment where the poor brown people live”
variety. Some blogs debate whether Gilbert’s brand of eviscerating
self-exploration — and our thirsty response to it — is just another example
of how obsessed we have all become with ourselves. But others bill Gilbert
as a latter-day Emmeline Pankhurst of women’s souls, praising her emotional
bravery.
Well, here’s the thing. I already think about myself a lot. In fact, one of
the reasons I so enjoyed Eat, Pray, Love was the chance to think about
myself even more (as in, where would I go on my spiritual journey? Which
also got me thinking about going on holiday this November). The job, the
man, the relationships, the haircut — all of these riveting topics are up
for daily, if not hourly, scrutiny. And I’m not the only one. My childless
friends are so obsessed with their own wellbeing that “just to not have to
think about myself any more” was recently cited by one of them as a
perfectly valid reason for having a baby.
What do you make of that, Ms Gilbert? “I think that anyone who has been a
beneficiary of feminism, which is all of us really, will find that the old
definition of respectability is gone,” she says. “We don’t have a template
of what it means to be a good woman, so every woman’s life becomes an
indictment of every other woman’s life. You’re overwhelmed by what you can
become. Every door you choose leaves 999 unopened, and you wonder about door
number 640. You’ve got so many options, you can only second-, third- and
eighth-guess, and if you get it wrong, you’ve made a terrible error and
abandoned some part of yourself that you’ll never get back.”
So it’s feminism’s fault. Hooray! Still, what to do about the problem in hand,
this burden of choice leading to the feeling that you’re never quite where
or who you’re supposed to be?
Throwing money at the situation is one option, in a Ray of Light-era Madonna
kind of a way. Neat spiritual fixes such as special yoga classes with
world-famous teachers flown in from Mysore, or £70 sessions with John the
healer (I quote a friend: “You only need four sessions!”), leave you feeling
deliciously centred — for about a day. And what if you don’t have the cash?
There is help at hand and it comes from a surprising source. Great spiritual
leaders, from Buddha to Jesus, have always taught that enlightenment comes
through service to others. Yes, girls — charidee, also known as doing
something for someone else.
No — come back! It’s not a sexy word, charity, or wasn’t until recently, when
celebrities started talking about it. If you have existential angst, you can
bet that your average millionaire celebrity has it 10,000 times worse. And
charity seems to do them good. Get a celebrity on the subject of their
favourite cause, and they’ll talk so fast and for so long, journalists
sometimes have to call time on the interview themselves.
The British poster woman for this ancient, but also oddly modern, spiritual
practice is Camila Batmanghelidjh, the founder of the south London
children’s charity Kids Company. Batmanghelidjh is easily as stylish
as Madonna and certainly a more zeitgeisty personality.
“Camila doesn’t have time to worry about being saintly,” says Kathy Phillips,
international beauty director of Vogue Asia, who recently collaborated with
Batmanghelidjh on a range of fundraising beauty products at Boots called
Good Works. “She’s worried about getting the kids their breakfast.”
Phillips, not a woman you would expect to be short of wellness treatments, is
a charitable doer, too. “There comes a point when you think not who am I,
but what can I do? It isn’t a considered effort. I just like the idea of
doing something where I live.”
When you take a closer look, it turns out that everyone cool is already at it.
Another lady whose bumpy emotional journey has led her to help others is
Martha Lane Fox, dotcom millionairess, near-death survivor and head of her
own charity, Antigone. “I was always interested in the criminal justice
system, and through Antigone I’m having an impact within it. Also, nursing,
which is something I think about daily after my horrific car accident. By
putting time into causes, I’m involved in issues larger than myself.”
“It makes my heart fly,” says Illona Aylmer, who works at Cherry D, a
not-for-profit organisation that gives business advice to charities based in
Bristol. “And I get paid to do it.”
With babies, mortality and the future on their minds, going green is an
obvious direction for thirtysomethings suffering a spiritual crisis. This is
also where you will find women in their twenties taking pre-emptive measures
not to end up in the same situation. Tamsin Omond, 23, a member of the
climate-change activist group Plane Stupid, ditched plans for a
post-Cambridge career in marketing to be a full-time campaigner. “A lot of
girls I know have done it,” says Omond. “They couldn’t have the life they
would have had and still have a clear conscience. They’d rather be excited,
honest and inspired.”
On October 13, 100 years to the month since the suffragettes rallied outside
parliament, Omond is organising a demo called Climate Rush. She’ll be joined
in Parliament Square by members of We Can, a group of west London yummy
mummies turned activists. “I know that what I do feels right,” says Omond.
“And that if I was doing anything else, it would not feel so right.” Better
than Louboutins, better than a yoga holiday. Who wouldn’t envy Omond’s sense
of purpose?
“We have stupendous opportunities, but you almost have to become a mystic to
survive them,” says Gilbert. “You have to find a deep, silent
calling that reassures you that, no matter what you do, you’ve done well.
Otherwise, you become a wreck. Or a brittle shell of false confidence that
makes other women feel bad. There’s a grieving that must happen for the
person you could have been. The new call is to help each other through it.”
A friend of mine with a complicated life quit her job recently to travel. And
that’s where she is now, sitting in a hut in Bali, gazing at her navel
and asking herself, what’s it all about? Will she find out?
Gilbert would tell her there is a long road ahead.
Anyway, this morning I got an e-mail from my friend. “I’ve met this girl,” she
said, “and she’s given me a book you’ve really got to read . .
.”
