Eat, Pray, Love

With our fab new satalite dish, we got to sample some free pay per view movies. I picked Eat Pray Love, not because I praticuarly enjoy Julia Roberts films, but because I thought the idea of taking a year off life and finding yourself sounded like a cool idea. I heard the book was much better and gave a lot more background into her life before she set out on her journey, but alas, I am just sticking with the movie for now. And I have to say, I get it! There was a line in the movie about how Americans, in general, feel like they need to work themselves to the bone to EARN 2 weeks of vacation. One of the men in Italy said something like Italian's don't feel like they have to earn time to just enjoy themselves, they know they deserve it. Yes, there it is, the daily grind, get up, get the kids ready, drop off the kids, work, work, work, get home, make dinner, feed kids, get kids ready for bed, collapse on couch and zone out to tv until crawling up to bed and falling asleep until alarm rings and cycle starts again (or in Ted's case, replace tv, bed and sleep with work work work) and the years roll by faster than the blink of an eye. What am I missing here? Part of me thinks about the chain e-mail that went around a few years ago about the kid that died and ended up in a room with the library rolladexes where each card cronicled his life and how he was embarrassed to see how many hours he had wasted watching tv, etc then Jesus comes along and crosses off him name on all the cards that were sins and writes his own. What will my rolladex look like? Will I be embarrased by the number of hours wasted? And what about this life I have been given? Did I spend too many hours defending "Christmas" as a Christian holiday when I should have just listen to people and "lightened up?". Yesterday was the feast of the Immaculate Conception. The priest talked about Original sin and Adam and Eve being banished. What I had never thought about was if they had not sinned, and we had all remained in paradise, there wouldn't have been the need to send Jesus down as our Savoir. That fact just escaped me I guess. This, my friends, is not paridise. Which probably means, life, in general, is hard, there will be frustration, exhaustion, trials, and uphill battles along with the joys, acomplishments, happiness and sucesses. Which leads me to the question, how do you eat, pray and love in your life?