As the year begins, many will embark on a self-improvement project. Elizabeth Gilbert’s mega-selling memoir “Eat Pray Love” has inspired millions toward a journey of self-discovery.
Many who have read the book see the author as wise. Gilbert made the Time Magazine list of 100 most influential people in the world, and she was named to Oprah’s SuperSoul 100 list of visionaries and influential leaders.
In “Eat Pray Love,” Gilbert shares what she has learned about happiness:
“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 make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.”
Gilbert’s idea of “fighting” and “striving” for happiness is popular. Over 1,600 fans of “Eat Pray Love” quote this passage approvingly at GoodReads.com, the social cataloging website for books. The quote appears in an astonishing 12 million Google searches. Gilbert’s ideas are popular, but many popular ideas are wrong.
Gilbert would have us believe there is a direct path to happiness that each of us can navigate. In Gilbert’s case, today’s right partner or circumstance may be replaced by a better one tomorrow, as one reaches for more happiness. But Gilbert’s path to happiness is misdirected. A bottomless appetite seeking better circumstances is antithetical to happiness.
Eli Finkel is a psychology professor at Northwestern University. In his book “The All or Nothing Marriage,” Finkel explains how Gilbert taps into our “cultural zeitgeist—the contemporary American hunger for a life that is true to the self rather than beholden to rules and restrictions.”
Finkel points out that at the beginning of “Eat Pray Love,” Gilbert is “married to a loving, decent” man and “knows it,” but “settling for love and decency doesn’t feel like an option for [her].”
In “Eat Pray Love,” Gilbert claims to find happiness and her true self. She falls in love with José Nunes (called Felipe in the book) a Brazilian-Australian importer. In her follow-up book to “Eat Pray Love,” “Committed,” Gilbert marries Nunes; she presumably lives happily ever after. Not so fast. In 2016, she left Nunes for Rayya Elias.
As Finkel points out, “This is the second time Gilbert has divorced an impressive and appealing partner who generally treated their relationship with respect and dignity.” Finkel adds:
