Eat, Pray, What?

I recently saw the movie Eat, Pray, Love. It's the story of one woman's journey to find love, happiness and peace for herself. So she leaves her world (literally), including her husband, job, friends/family, and spends an entire year traveling the world in search of love, happiness and peace. She has made the choice to leave everything in order to find these things for herself.

There's certainly nothing wrong with wanting love, happiness and peace, understanding who you are, seeking answers to those big questions in your mind. But as you live life, remember that your life involves other people. As John Donne once wrote, "No man is an island." The way we live our life touches others. The choices we make for ourselves affect the people around us, no matter how big or small the choice is.

Think about it. When good things happen to us, we want to share it with others. When our good choices result in good outcomes, we want to share that success with the people we care about, for instance choosing college and then celebrating when we finally graduate. Our good choices affect others because they care about us and want to celebrate with us. And in the same way, our negative choices affect those same people. When we hurt, those who care for us hurt as well. Our choices can even affect people we don't know. don't be fooled into believing your choices don't affect others. They affect someone.

Much of this love, happiness and peace we seek comes when we focus, not on our own love, happiness and peace, but in helping others find the same. The people we interact with on a daily basis like co-workers, peers, friends, boy/girl friends, spouses, etc...those people we eat, pray and love with.

Tabitha