"Eat Pray Love"

Eat Pray Love was my main summer read. I'm a little behind the times, I know. I haven't seen the movie yet either, but this has been the perfect book for me to read for this season of my life. In a nutshell, its about a woman going on a search across 3 countries to find herself & her spirituality. As for the "finding myself" part, there's always plenty to learn. This summer has been a "me" summer. I've learned that I need to find fulfillment from within myself and God alone. No one else can do that for me. So, I'm working on it.

Anyway- this post was inspired by a paragraph from Eat Pray Love that talked about the author's definition of happiness. Since this blog just so happens to be entitled, "Happiness Is..," I had to include it.

And so she says, "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 descent 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 for 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 once you have achieved 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. If you don't, you will leak away your innate contentement. It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuting to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments."

Thoughts? Anyone?

Sidenote: Way off subject, but I keep forgetting to update you on the baby birds. Well, they have flown far, far, away now. They've been gone for atleast a month & I kept forgetting to update. The fern had seen its better days and was getting brown and crispy in the hot sun so I threw it away along with the empty nest. We'll start over next summer :) Maybe my birdies will return and lay their eggs in the spot where they were raised.

Caroline