25 & Trying

Committed

Committed - The latest from Elizabeth Gilbert

Elizabeth Gilbert, whose name has most likely been replaced by “that author of Eat, Pray, Love, has fast become one of the voices that I listen to in all aspects of reading and writing. She is a well-studied, eloquent, and beautiful writer whose books have amazed me. Her latest work, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage, may have just been life altering.

I chose to read the book because of Gilbert’s strong voice – not because of my marital status. Frankly, she could have written the biography of a cactus plant, and I would have read it. THAT is how life changing her last book was. Eat. Pray, Love was a book about her struggle out of depression and into a year of travel. It was also a struggle of my journey through depression at a time in my life that I had absolutely NO means to quit life and gallivant through Italy, India, and Indonesia.

She gave voice to my pain, and now through Committed, she gives light to my happiness. This book leaves off where EPL ends: Gilbert has been happily in love with Felipe – her Brazilian lover that she met in Bali during her year of travel. Turns out, it wasn’t just an amazing fling. They have been seriously involved, traveling, and even living together in Philadelphia as they settle into their lives together.

BAM.

Insert conflict. Felipe is stopped entering the U.S., and is denied entry until he and Gilbert wed. It is the only way that they can enter the country without problems in the future, and is the direction they were kinda headed in anyway.

The voices of dissent in the back of the author’s brain send her on a yearlong mission. As they travel the world and await a fiancé visa, Gilbert analyzes marriage as a concept, and utilizes this memoir as a way to talk herself into the comfort of two divorced, middle-aged people deciding to wed – AGAIN.

This time, their travels in Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and Bali serve as merely a backdrop to her discussion of what it means to really marry someone – in all cultures, at all times in life.

Normally, it would be here that I analyze her arguments and reflections on the institutions of marriage. But I must say, the book is meant to be read. It is meant to be experienced by those that seek it out, and her lessons are lost on those that use a blog post as a replacement for that activity.

It caused me to consider things about being married that are scary. Those emotions that can poke holes in foundations, but also build them up again. And it made me realize how much a leap of faith we all take when we fall in love with someone else – regardless of whether we marry them.

Maybe the most surprising component of the book is that it made me stop halfway and have a debate with my husband about some of the concepts within it. For example, we took the time to actually hash out Gilbert’s claim that women can sometimes lose their independence in relationships. We also talked about the uncomfortable elephant in the room – infidelity. I was amazed that after not even two days of reading, my author was talking to me in a way that was actually causing ME to talk.

Her honesty and integrity and actual fear that comes through is just so accurate at reflecting what we really feel about relationships. We are proud and happy and terrified at the same time. We never know the future, but we all bet on it like gambling addicts. Being “committed” as the title suggests is a fundamental component of being married. THANK YOU ELIZABETH GILBERT for teaching us that it really isn’t the only part. It’s a portion of a complex fabric that we each weave ourselves.

We may have kids, we may not. We may become CFO’s, we may not. We may travel the world, or we may not leave the state in which we are born. However, we all fall in love. Generations and centuries of history are filled with this inevitability. And she makes us realize that, institutionalized or not, marriage and its’ consequences are here to stay.

On a more personal note, I was 100% ecstatic that she drew light to what it is like to marry someone – or even be in love with someone – from another country. Immigration officers are but one small piece of the vast levels of difference and conflict that couples like myself can face.

Thank you, Ms. Gilbert for telling a story of your own experience that echoes mine.

Just like the first time I put down EPL and said “wow, there are things in life past pain,” I put down Committed and thought, “wow, there are so many things in life past marriage. And I can’t wait to experience them.”