Over the summer of 2010, my girlfriend and I began an interesting new project. We bought a book and read it together. I would read a chapter out loud to her, and she would return the favour for the following chapter. We would read outside on the back patio of her grandmother's house over a glass of wine; we would read curled up in bed with a cup of hot cocoa (one of us half asleep and the listener dozing); we would read at the kitchen table in the morning over breakfast... Back and forth we would continue until, saddeningly, in a couple of weeks the book was finished.
The book was Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love.
I know what you're thinking: How much did my girlfriend pay me to read that chick-flick of a book with her? Well... you'll be surprised to hear (if you don't already know this) that this book is actually quite well-written and much less "chick-flicky" than it is popularized to be. Within its pages, we found instances of intertextuality and references to important works of literature which even the most cultured of people would be impressed to find. More than that, the book explores the questions of existence that we've all had to some capacity and haven't known what to do with. The answers the author comes up with were both satisfying and challenging at the same time.
I'm not here to sell you the book. What I would like to take from this initial anecdote, however, is the way Gilbert envisions us to all have a unique 'word' that describes each individual comprehensively. It seems foolish to think we can reduce ourselves to a single word, yet the same could be said about this novel--that it is foolish to reduce the wonderful and glorious city of Rome to one small section of a novel about a single person's experience there. Yet Gilbert does this with precision, and teaches us that sometimes there is merit in simplicity. Although she is able to find her word instantly, as per the narrative of the book, I find it hard to believe that it was truly this easy. This is a practice that takes time and careful consideration.
A friend of mine was watching the film adaptation of this story recently (which I would never recommend to anyone until AFTER they have read the book - simply because it does not compare to the depth of the author's dialogue in text, which essentially makes the book for me) and she came upon this scene where the protagonist discusses her 'word'. Newly inspired by this, my friend asked me, 'What's your word?" I thought I would be really good at this and was ready to blurt out the first thing that came to my mind; something clever and potentially funny that we would be forgetting about within hours. But then I stopped and replied, "I'm not sure... I'll find one and let you know soon." This was a few weeks ago, and only today have I come upon what I think I would like to use as my 'word'.
After agreeing that my friend's word should be 'conundrum' and refusing to explain to her exactly why this should be, I still had not found mine. I circulated between a few different ones: ambition, concentration, thought, etc. None of them seemed to satisfy me because they always described a single part of me, a segment of my emotion or personality, but never my entire essence. O needed a word that concisely sums up who I am as a product of all my emotions. So today I was thinking about how I always tend to 'go with the flow', so-to-speak. I am an opinionated individual, and I don't allow things to slide if they will prove to be offensive to my well-being or that of others, but I do tend to be quite accomodating and I have an annoying desire to make sure that those around me are happy and agreeable whenever I can. I like to think alot. My stream of consciousness is probably well-compared to a river. I had to sign up for Twitter to help me cope with this. I am also ambitious, but I will never stress about my goals. I just make sure that I always have goals, and that I am continuously doing things that contribute to their eventual completion. I am constantly moving forward but leave a strong trace of my past in my path. Essentially, my life has flowed like a river in many different respects.
Flow.
What's your word?
