While on my vacation, I finally got around to reading Eat, Pray, Love. The book, as a whole was great – a wonderful example of writing about personal experiences and simply about self. However, I don’t want to write a review, especially since I am quite possibly one of the last people to have read this book. Instead, there was one small part of the book that I found to be very intriguing.
In conversation with one of the many characters the author comes across throughout her journeys, they discuss the idea of cities having one word. According to this individual: “Every city has a single word that defines it, that identifies with most people who live there… And if your personal word does not match the word of the city, then you don’t really belong there.”
The natural follow-up question to this idea is: What’s your word?
Is this a fluid concept? Does it change as you age, accomplish new things and meet new people?
At the moment, I think my word is BALANCE. Finding equilibrium is consistently on my mind. Work-life balance. Friends-family-fiance balance. Active-lazy. I also like to think this fits in well with Minneapolis-St. Paul. But, I could definitely see others having a different word for the Twin Cities.
What do you think? What’s your word? What’s the Twin Cities’ word?
#1 by Natalie Wires on May 13, 2010 - 11:12 am
This book legit changed my life. I know that sounds silly, but it’s true. I just happened to read it at a time in my life when it’s words rang very true to me. The word I took out of it that I continually remind myself of is “transformation.”
Here is the quote from the book that I read over and over to remind myself of lessons I learned from reading Eat, Pray, Love.
“I look at the Augusteum and I think that perhaps my life has not actually been so chaotic, after all. It is merely this world that is chaotic, bringing changes to us all that nobody could have anticipated. The Augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve. Yesterday I might have been a glorious monument to somebody, true enough – but tomorrow I could be a fireworks depository. Even in the Eternal City, says the silent Augusteum, one must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation.”
Although I have read it probably hundreds of times, I still get chills.
#2 by Kristin on May 13, 2010 - 11:34 am
Love it. I can totally see “transformation” being your word, Nat.
I wrote all over the book when I was reading it. This is definitely one that I will be re-reading again and again.