Last night i had the honor of attending a lecture given by Elizabeth Gilbert. I dont know if i read her book at the perfect moment in my life or if i could have read it at any point and loved it so much but love it i do! I have reread it twice through and randomly at points thereafter.
I wish i could just rewrite her entire lecture right here for you because it was poignant, charming, graceful and direct. She used her stories to answer all of the questions we have, how is her marriage to the Brazilian? what is her meditation practice like now? What it is like to be Elizabeth Gilbert every single day? She left us all with the peace of mind that she is human, she is a woman who has been guided by her Genius and that she is very very happy. She said that her prayers used to be please, please, please and now they are thank you thank you thank you. She said there is a place for gratitude in life and for her, that is now.
She has actually been asked how she is ever going to top EPL and how she can stand the pressure of that failure? good god! can you imagine? of course we all have something that we think about that way but she said, we also all know that sometimes something happens and we are not entirely responsible for its result. When she was 8 she was writing in her journal about her sledding adventure that day and wrote it was like riding a thoroughbred who had been stung by a bee. After she wrote that, she thought HEY that is a great analogy! where did that come from?? She didnt write a best seller on purpose, it happened to her and she has no idea how to repeat that. but her life will not be guided by the destruction of her previous works solely to top that with something better. How did we become a people who always needs to create the new and never seen before? why isnt one best seller enough, she thought after To Kill a Mockingbird was published with such acclaim, Harper Lee should have been permitted to garden or watch pay per view for the rest of her life! Why after creating one of the most important pieces of literature in our history, was that not enough for one person to accomplish. Maybe it was someone else’s turn.
Her ideas of Genius were glorious. She said that before the renaissance period, Genius was a gift like god entering your body and creating through you. she equated it to the Whirling Dervishes who would get into such a religious frenzy that people would watch them and shout Allah! Allah! Allah! , saying that is God, that is what he is. When the Moors entered Spain they brought this frenzy of dancing with them and that is where we now get Ole! Ole! when something is worked into a frenzy of excitement. It is the genius coming out through a person to create something. She also said that people believed that a genius (like Genie) would be passed down in a home through a family. Like the Kennedy family had a genius for Politics or the Fonda family has a genius for acting.
And because your genius is something that is separate from you and flows through you, it also protects you from the brunt of disapproval and praise. It is different from a muse, who is a person who inspires your genius, genius is more like the embodiment of god. She had an interview with Tom Waits who told her that he was in dialog with his creative genius.
He was driving on the LA freeway one day and an amazing rift came into his head and he had to yell, cant you see that i am driving here? if you are serious about this, then come back to me when i have time to listen to you.
How incredibly empowering to have a dialog with your genius instead of feeling isolated and obsessed with pulling creativity from your self.
Liz, felt that it was at that point, when we placed the Genius as self, that artists and poets and writers began to go crazy. it is never thought about twice if an artist is a junky or a poet depressed or a writer a drunk. but why does it have to be this way? She was told by a teacher that she was a good writer but would never be a great writer because she hadnt suffered enough.
She advised us all is to be very very gentle with ourselves. She knows we all have to go through our rites of passage but we should all be permitted to create our our rituals to pass through those harsh rites as unscathed as possible. Make them something that is personal and meaningful to us each. When a friend who had never married battled the idea that she had never become an adult because she hadnt passed the rite of bride, she came to terms with it and created a ritual. She constructed beautiful boats of paper and took them down to the water and lit them on fire and let them go. She let the idea of bride go and married her own life. Liz chose never to have children and after struggling with that rite as a woman she became a butterfly. She became an auntie that is fleeting in life andlasts only for 1 generation and is gone but in that time her efforts are endless and powerful. She is empowered by her ability to be the support and the strength others may need. She said there are stories all over the world about The Great Aunt and 30% of women in the world in all walks of life choose not to enter the gene pool. It is not a matter of selfishness or selflessness but a matter of choice and to have the power to create meaning from our choices, even though some of our choices are not self-imposed.
Finally, dont always go looking for the negative and the bad and the difficult because let me tell you that stuff has your address and knows where you live and when you are home alone. It has no problem finding you all by itself, enjoy the life you are given, it is the only one we have this time around. This time around.
What a lady!
