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bf18146
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I was struck - not for the first time in my years of travel - by how isolating contemporary American society can seem by comparison. Where I came from, we have shriveled down the notion of what constitutes 'a family unit' to such a tiny scale that it would probably be unrecognizable as a family to anybody in one of these big, loose, enveloping Hmong clans. You almost need an electron microscope to study the modern Western family these days.
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hmong
memoir
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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fbe6041
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Now that young girls like my twelve-year-old friend Mai are being exposed to modern Western women like me through crowds of tourists, they're experiencing those first critical moments of cultural hesitation. I call this the "Wait-a-Minute Moment" - that pivotal instant when girls from traditional cultures start pondering what's in it for them, exactly, to be getting married at the age of thirteen and starting to have babies not long after. ..
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memoir
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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df09a2b
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So you are industrious, but not original?
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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ca872ed
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But in our wholeness, we became overly proud. In our pride, we neglected to worship the gods. The mighty Zeus punished us for our neglect by cutting all the double-headed, eight-limbed, perfectly contented humans in half, thereby creating a world of cruelly severed one-headed, two-armed, two-legged miserable creatures. In this moment of mass amputation, Zeus inflicted on mankind that most painful of human conditions: the dull and constant s..
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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043930e
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I do what I do because I like doing it.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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5482257
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Todo pasa. Con el tiempo todo pasa.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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d6d5b20
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Getting out of a marriage is rough, though, and not just for the legal / financial complications or the massive lifestyle upheaval. (As my friend Deborah once advised me wisely: "Nobody ever died from splitting up furniture.") It's the emotional recoil that kills you, the shock of stepping off the track of a conventional lifestyle and losing all the embracing comforts that keep so many people on that track forever."
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marriage
separation
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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1cd5def
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Because what my gradmother did with her fine coat (the loveliest thing she would ever own) is what all women of that generation (and before) did for their families and their husbands and their children. They cut up the finest and proudest parts of themselves and gave it all away. They repatterned what was theirs and shaped it for others. They went without. They were the last ones to eat at supper, and they were the first ones to get up ever..
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love
motherhood
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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c072a42
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it was impossible to imagine where in this crowded domestic arrangement you might find the happier twin sister of loneliness: privacy
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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7164714
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Life was just unbelievably happy.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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416ef3c
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A maior parte da Humanidade tem os olhos cheios de poeira da desilusao que nunca verao a verdade, por mais ajudas que tenham. Outras pessoas ja sao tao perspicazes e calmas que nao precisam de instrucao ou ajuda, seja de que tipo for. Mas ha tambem aquelas cujos olhos tem apenas uma ligeira poeira e que, com a ajuda do mestre certo, poderao ser ensinadas a ver mais claramente um dia" - Buda"
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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10c27ff
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Most of all, though, he asked his students to be brave. Without bravery, he instructed, they would never be able to realize the vaulting scope of their own capacities. Without bravery, they would never know the world as richly as it longs to be known.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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a8e9d7a
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I want to have a lasting experience of God," I told him. "Sometimes I feel like I understand the divinity of this world, but then I lose it because I get distracted by my petty desires and fears"."
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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e5d4e2c
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Dolce Far Niente
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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e658f32
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I can cope with, and even somehow enjoy, the sinking melancholy of Venice, just for a few days. Somewhere in me I am able to recognize that this is not my melancholy; this is the city's own indigenous melancholy, and I am healthy enough these days to be able to feel the difference between me and it. This is a sign, I cannot help but think, of healing, of the coagulation of my self. There were a few years there, lost in borderless despair, w..
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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e5fe027
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Because when it all comes together, it's amazing. When it all comes together, the only thing you can do is bow down in gratitude, as if you have been granted an audience with the divine. Because you have.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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16e8010
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the Upanishads suggest that so-called chaos may have an actual divine function, even if you personally can't recognize it right now: "The best we can do, then, in response to our incomprehensible and dangerous world, is to practice holding equilibrium internally-no matter what insanity is transpiring out there."
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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07b28da
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So quero Deus. Quero Deus dentro de mim. Quero que Deus brinque na minha corrente sanguinea da mesma forma que a luz do sol se diverte na agua
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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c056dcd
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Work with all your heart, because--I promise--if you show up for your work day after day after day after day, you
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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d625d92
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He told them that they must live their most creative lives as a means of fighting back against the ruthless furnace of this world. Most of all, though, he asked his students to be brave. Without bravery, he instructed, they would never be able to realize the vaulting scope of their own capacities. Without bravery, they would never know the world as richly as it longs to be known. Without bravery, their lives would remain small--far smaller ..
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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05f2693
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I had creativity within me that was original; I had a personality within me that was original; I had dreams and perspectives and aspirations within me that were original.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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d68bea7
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It's a pity we cannot put an old head on young shoulders, or you could be wise, too. But someday you will understand that nobody passes through this world without suffering--no matter what you may think of them and their supposed good fortune.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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a6fb921
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This was simply not enough hours. This left far too many remaining hours free, and free hours were dangerous. Free hours created too much opportunity for examining the disappointments she was meant to be grinding under her boot heel.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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e97119a
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As the saying goes: "Argue for your limitations and you get to keep them."
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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2504112
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C]reative living is a path for the brave.
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creativity
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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ad38e32
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Q: What is creativity? A: The relationship between a human being and the mysteries of inspiration.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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ed2c86a
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Every time you express a complaint about how difficult and tiresome it is to be creative, inspiration takes another step away from you,
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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d3b6566
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The poet David Whyte calls this sense of creative entitlement "the arrogance of belonging," and claims that it is an absolutely vital privilege to cultivate if you wish to interact more vividly with life."
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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027166a
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When artists are burdened with the label of "genius," I think they lose the ability to take themselves lightly, or to create freely."
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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df8e243
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Lastly, remember what W. C. Fields had to say on this point: "It ain't what they call you; it's what you answer to."
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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5e78709
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You can believe that you are neither a slave to inspiration nor its master, but something far more interesting--its partner--and that the two of you are working together toward something intriguing and worthwhile.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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f4e52fb
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As the psychologist Carol Gilligan has written, "Women's sense of integrity seems to be entwined with an ethic of care, so that to see themselves as women is to see themselves in a relationship of connection."
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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7909bc7
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Unlike so many of my friends, I did not ache with longing whenever I saw an infant. (Though I did ache with longing, it is true, whenever I saw a good used-book shop.)
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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9f8af0a
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THIS IS ME! MY FATHER WAS A GREATER WARRIOR THAN YOUR FATHER! YOU CANNOT EVEN LIFT MY SPEAR
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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b1eb4a5
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Please tell me I'm not the only one who finds it endearing and encouraging that a legendary Roman philosopher had to reassure himself that it's okay not to be Plato.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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e43a30e
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If you don't learn to travel comfortably alongside your fear, then you'll never be able to go anywhere interesting or do anything interesting.
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fear
living
travel
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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b50794a
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Modern married women do not fare better in life than their single counterparts. Married women in America do not live longer than single women; married women do not accumulate as much wealth as single women (you take a 7 percent pay cut, on average, just for getting hitched); married women do not thrive in their careers to the extent single women do; married women are significantly less healthy than single women; married women are more likel..
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elizabeth gilbert |
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57e9447
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That competition and the struggle for existence is the mechanism behind this state of perpetual change.
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competition
struggle
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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4380f34
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The earliest evidence of recognizable human art is forty thousand years old. The earliest evidence of human agriculture, by contrast, is only ten thousand years old. Which means that somewhere in our collective evolutionary story, we decided it was way more important to make attractive, superfluous items than it was to learn how to regularly feed ourselves.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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16b4b7b
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There are so many good reasons to stop complaining if you want to live a more creative life.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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887e5b7
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forever. To create a family with a spouse is one of the most fundamental ways a person can find continuity and meaning in American (or any) society. I rediscover this truth every time I go to a big reunion of my mother's family in Minnesota and I see how everyone is held so reassuringly in their positions over the years. First you are a child, then you are a teenager, then you are a young married person, then you are a parent, then you are ..
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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ebaff92
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Interesting outcomes, after all, are just awful outcomes with the volume of drama turned way down. I
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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ecd9c86
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Whenever I got those rejection letters, then, I would permit my ego to say aloud to whoever had signed it: "You think you can scare me off? I've got another eighty years to wear you down! There are people who haven't even been born yet who are gonna reject me someday--that's how long I plan to stick around."
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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b806727
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You can start wherever you decide to start.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |