When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings.
Elizabeth GilbertBut at some point you have to make peace with what you were given and if God wanted me to be a shy girl with think, dark hair, He would have made me that way, but He didn't. Useful, then, might be to accept how I was made and embody myself fully therein.
Elizabeth GilbertWell, just remember--all your misery will be waiting for you at the door upon your exit, should you care to pick it up again when you leave.
Elizabeth GilbertI do forget sometimes how much it means for certain menโfor certain peopleโto be able to provide their loved ones with material comforts and protection at all times. I forget how dangerously reduced some men can feel when that basic ability has been stripped from them. I forget how much that matters to men, what it represents.
Elizabeth GilbertThe notion is that human beings are born, (as my Guru has explained many times,) with equivalent potential for both contraction and expansion. The ingredients of both darkness and light are equally present in all of us, and then it's up to the individual (or the family, or the society) to decide what will be brought forth - the virtues or the malevolence. The madness of this planet is largely a result of human being's difficulty in coming into virtuous balance with himself. Lunacy (both collective and individual) results.
Elizabeth Gilbert