Committed

The new book by Elizabeth Gilbert, is more than worth the wait. The author of Eat, Pray and Love, I read her books I somehow get an intuitive connection of  her fears, her apprehensions, the dilema's and paradoxes she faces.

Eat, Pray and Love, ended with her sitting on the terrace in a small but well done cottage in Bali, where she and new lover, a Bazilan man residing in Bali for several years were rediscovering the art of permitting some one to enter the privately guarded world of intimacy.

Commitment, her new book starts 2 years later. Brazillian man, and her have been dating for over 2 years and have decided to make America home. They arrive, only for the man to be deported, unravelling a legal mess of immigration and papers that makes it NECESSARY for her to MARRY! Something that neither of them wanted to do for several reasons.

This is where the book gets interesting. She is so apprehensive of the looming legal wedding that she spends an entire year researching the notion of it on an emotive level. interviewing, reading, delving into the history of the institution the works.. but here are few of the parts that resonated best for me:

Liked her take on marriage, that the need for it to exist in the first place was for the state to be able to have some semblance of control over abandoned kids and property. for the remainder it was a intensely private act whose rules of existence are intensely private, only for the 2 ppl that it belongs to.

For me marriage, is simple. it is not about getting the house, or the car. It is for each person to inspire the other to do things or be the best that they can. To accept the flaws the other comes with. To be a travel or an experience junkie.

Liked the lines she used.

that while she loved her boyfriend deeply she had vowed never to marry. never to blend finances, assets, to avoid the nightmare that a potential re-division of wealth gotten together needs.

Cant seem to find the exact lines that melted my heart, but the crux was. Marriage is a strange deed to enter into. To willingly permit the state to have a say in my decision to walk away from living with someone is surreal. The manner of interference that this institute faces is immense. A spouse, is the loudest choice that you make in your life, its a DECELERATION- to the world to say that is what i choose.

Hmmm, I stand on the crossroad, where I have been muttering to myself the desire to marry. Usually, stop the reflection at that. Probing deeper into the why do I want that comes up with surprising answers.

The bitchiest of them being that I am bored. My life is currently scattered and resembles a mapless hitchhiker devoid of a destination. Am sort of supplanting the Goal with marriage.

At another level, am literally thinking of the man as the "man in shining armor" someone who may come, swoop down and vala am transported to another land. Shld realize that Wizard of Oz was a book.

Or the best answer, that i want kids. hehehe what a lie. As in I do want them, but within 15 minuted of playing with the pup. am ready to send her off to the guards below. So maternal spirit can take a walk.

What then is the compelling rush in my head to tie the knot? Why such intense desire.? Why this sadness when i hear of another friend getting married? Not that i want the person that they are with? What is this quest to be with someone?

Dont have the answers. But the closest bet that I can guess, is that there is a craving for intimacy. Not sex. but intimacy, building a shared tomm, sitting and talking on the bed, lounging together with books, shared moments, stories and fears. A naked kind of trust, that is not fleeting. If this comes with the baggage of marriage, or comes walking in through the door with no label.

the branding for this one does not matter