♫ I'd like to buy the world a Coke....♫

So lately I’ve been all earthy crunchy. I started reading Eat Pray Love, and started eating semi organic. Which means I spread my Skippy peanut butter on Ezekial Bread toast. (“Ezekiel 4:9® Bread, made from freshly sprouted organically grown grains, is naturally flavorful and bursting with nutrients”) The book and the health phase aren’t related…I have to blame the previous book I read, and Jillian Michaels who wrote it, for the organic, healthy eating.

Whether it’s my spiritual side, or my arteries gasping in relief at two days without transfats and pesticides, I do feel pretty good today. Much better than the last two days, when I thought my head would shoot off my neck like a bottle rocket gone mad, due to a combination of work stress and Coke withdrawal. (Not the snort or smoke kind- my monkey comes in a bottle full of high fructose corn syrup that you can buy at the 7-Eleven down the street.)
 

I don’t think I would ever be able to eat entirely organic, though- even the cream for my coffee has some kind of chemical in it! It’s CREAM for crying out loud- who knew I would have to look for extra ingredients in it?! (Not to mention I’m supposed to find cream from cows that haven’t been injected with rBGH- some genetically created bovine growth hormone). 

On the plus side, the organic food section at Stop and Shop has lots and lots of cookies. I guess that makes sense- if you have to spend your day eating twigs, sprouts, and trying to find cream without chemicals, you need cookies to keep you from making a sling shot out of your Birkenstocks and firing pesticide-free grapes at passersby.

 Now on to the book- I have to say, I’m thoroughly enjoying it. No desire to see the movie though- I figure they’ll just bastardize it. Kind of like they did with “He’s Just Not That Into You.” There are so many light bulb moments in it as I read, even though it’s just one woman’s journeys, that I’ve actually started marking pages off to refer back to.

I’ll give you an example!

"There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under the jurisdiction. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, whom I share my body and life and money and energy with. I can select what I can read and eat and study. I can choose how I'm going to regard unfortunate circumstances in my life-whether I will see them as curses or opportunities. I can choose my words and the tone of voice in which I speak to others. And most of all, I can choose my thoughts."

- Elizabeth Gilbert

And another:

"There's a reason we refer to "leaps of faith" - because the decision to consent to any notion of divinity is a mighty jump from the rational over to the unknowable, and I don't care how diligently scholars of every religion will try to sit you down with their stacks of books and prove to you through scripture that their faith is indeed rational; it isn't. If faith were rational, it wouldn't be - by definition - faith. Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be... a prudent insurance policy."

- Elizabeth Gilbert

Of course the book isn’t ALL like that- that would be tough to read. It’s mostly a warm, funny story of one woman’s journey to find herself. (Oops, I’m turning this into a book review.)

It’s all very enlightening, but I still have no desire to go an Ashram in India and sit on stone floors for hours to meditate. I can’t even sit in a comfy recliner without fidgeting.