Gilbert

“I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.” -Mother Teresa

We live in a world of sci-fi robot airplanes ripping human beings to shreds; deforestation; climate change; amoral banking hives that deprive the majority while living in gaudy excess; global militant violence and genocide. All this, and still we must come to terms with the brevity of our own inhale of everything that is and was and will be, this thing called life.  In response to the current state of affairs on planet Earth, I don’t find cynicism wholly inappropriate.

So when Philip Roth indirectly announced his retirement from writing to debut novelist Julian Tepper by telling Tepper to quit writing, because it was “[j]ust torture,” it didn’t surprise me that Roth would say such a thing.

In a torturous existence, why are writers willfully torturing themselves for infinitesimal gain?

By now it’s clear that I’m not a very successful optimist.  But this is precisely why a positive voice–as unsettlingly cheerful as we may find it–can be so vital for the pessimists and cynics, if only for the sake of a balanced perspective.

Enter Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert.

Gilbert’s response to Roth, essentially, was: Get over yourself.