Commenter SD remarked on the post I wrote about Eat Pray Love: “If for no other reason, I will see the movie for the locations and because escaping geographically is something I definitely view as therapeutic. Just have to remember ‘…you have to take yourself with you’. (Alain de Botton)”
I’ve definitely found that to be true at certain points in my life. And it doesn’t always have to be far-flung destinations that inspire: I remember one time my husband and I were driving up to Ottawa on Highway 416 when there was the most incredible double rainbow. We had Queen on and it was such a road trip moment, full of light and colour and motion and possibility. We ended up having one of the best conversations we’d had in a long time.
What have been some of your travel moments?
This weekend the New York Times Magazine asked – and tried to answer – the question “Why are so many people in their 20s taking so long to grow up?” And as these things often do, it inspired a lot of blogs posts and responses, including (but not confined to):
The New York Times‘ Motherlode blog which closed comments after receiving 790.
The tongue-in-cheek “What is it About Eightysomethings” over at Vanity Fair.
The New Yorker came out with a list of novels for emerging adults.
And Tabatha Southey’s defense of the not-so-empty-nest over at the Globe and Mail.
[Edited to add: Linda thoughtfully adds in the comments that <em>The Walrus has a piece by Marni Jackson on the same theme. I'm sorry I missed that one!]
I will freely admit that as a soon-to-be-40 Generation X slacker (who married at 24 and bought a house at 26, the down payment for which was from the bank of Mom and Dad) some of the arguments about “kids today” seem awfully familiar. The recession of the early 90s into which I graduated was not as deep as the current one, but there is a reason many of us ended up working in new(er) technologies – it was pretty hard to break into the older ones.
I do have to point out that More’s own article on emerging adults was in subscribers’ hands the week of August 10th. Please read and let us know what YOU think of this generational analysis in the comments!
Elizabeth Gilbert’s best-selling midlife renewal memoir Eat Pray Love gets the star treatment this week as a Julia Roberts film. I might go to see Julia Roberts and because unsurprisingly, I’m a sucker for a midlife story.
But true confession: I didn’t like the book. I wanted to like it. I even liked the idea that here was a woman going off to find herself rather than the man being the one to go sit on a mountain top for midlife enlightenment. And I did like the truth in it. But in the end – I found I couldn’t really relate, and reading it felt like a bit of a slog. So much for literary analysis.
Thinking about divorce films though, I might re-rent Waiting to Exhale. Less enlightenment; more setting of clothing on fire. (War of the Roses is also a favourite – hmmm, not sure what this says about me.) Both made it to our list of 10 movies about divorce.
Let me know what you thought of Eat Pray Love, book or movie!
I’ve made it a minor project to try to reconnect with old friends this summer. Fortunately, some of them are better at it than I and I got a major gift in this direction: A regular invitation to a Friday-night wine-and-chat with local friends. You know you’re living the good life when you have a chance to hang out with people who really get some of your daily struggles. And a bottle of Pinot Grigio doesn’t hurt!
On that theme I’d like to invite you to comment with one tip about either wine (buying, storing, serving) or friendship (making, nurturing, evaluating), and I’ll select 3 lucky winners at random from the comments to receive a bottle of Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio, valued at $16.95 (and sweetened with victory as well). You must comment before noon on Wednesday August 18.
As with all our blog giveaways: One entry per person please, and sadly we cannot offer this to our Quebec or non-Canadian readers. By entering you agree to accept the prize as awarded and we reserve the right to substitute a prize of equal value. You must be of legal drinking age in your province and of the age of majority. We accept no liability about what happens when you drink the wine.
And if you don’t win, or if you can’t wait to find out and are heading out to buy the wine – here’s extra incentive to try the Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio: From July 18th to August 14th, 50 cents from the sale of each bottle of this popular wine will be donated to the Scotiabank AIDS Walk for Life.
This giveaway is now closed and winners will be contacted shortly!
Here’s a neat documentary to catch if you’re in Alberta, B.C., or Ontario – Resilience: Stories of Single Black Mothers, from filmmaker Lana Lovell and Storyline Entertainment. The documentary looks inside the experiences of three different single mums in Canada – and yes, two of the mums are over 40. One quote from Simone has really stayed with me – “I felt like I just couldn’t make any mistakes because there’s nobody there to break my fall.” This one’s definitely worth checking out. On OMNI. 1 in Onatrio and OMNI in Alberta and B.C. on Sunday August 8 – check local listings for details.
I’ve been looking for an excuse to link to this blog post by Jennifer Lawlor for a couple of weeks and I’m going to have to put it here. Bring Kleenex for this one, as she looks back over 13 years of parenting a child with Tuberous Sclerosis. And at joy.
For a different sort of resilience, I wanted to point out this article from last week’s New York Times: The Un-Divorced. I have occasionally half-joked that my marriage would go better if we each lived in separate condos on the same floor. But this might be going a little far.
If you’re inclined to share, I’d love your thoughts or links to do with resilience – in large or small ways.
