Some time ago I asked readers to give me hints about funny books, books that wouldn't make me cry. I have read so many sad books lately, that I felt that I really needed something happier, something funnier. This book was exactly the right choice right now. No, it's not the highest literature you can get, but it did make me laugh (out loud) and that's just what I needed.

In her book "Eat, pray, love" Elizabeth Gilbert tells about a year in her life. After a difficult divorce she decides to spend a year travelling in Italy, India and Indonesia. She tries to find a balance between pleasure (=spending four months in Italy eating pizza and pasta) and discipline (=spending next four months in India practicing yoga)

 I think I fell for this book after reading this:

Traveling is the great true love of my life. I have always felt, ever since I was sixteen years old and first went to Russia with my saved-up babysitting money, that to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice. I am loyal and constant in my love for travel, as I have not always been loyal and constant in my other loves. I feel about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, restless newborn baby - I just don't care what it puts me through. Because it's mine. Because it looks exactly like me. It can barf all over me if it wants to - I just don't care.

For years I felt exactly like this myself. I love traveling and I have travelled a lot in my life. But since I moved to Norway have things changed. I have lived here almost three years now, I have worked here, gave birth here and found new norwegian friends, but still I don't feel quite like home. Somehow I feel that I'm still "traveling" here and that's why I don't feel that I should travel anywhere else (except maybe back to Finland). Even when I don't feel it anymore, that urge to travel, I still remember how it felt. I remember how it felt to stand alone in the middle of Buenos Aires knowing that I don't need to go back home for six whole months. I remember how it felt to know that the whole big city was all mine and even when I was living in the shittiest and smallest rathole in the city, I loved it because it was my rathole, it was my journey, my adventure. 

Of course it is a lovely thought to travel for a year, but right now I was especially tempted by the idea to meditate four months in India. As I told earlier I have started to meditate every morning (ok, not every morning) and right now I feel that I wouldn't mind to spend some time alone just meditating and trying to find some kind of peace of mind. Well, I know I would start to miss my family after first three days, but that is exactly why it was so nice to read that at least someone else has done it. I am also aware that it is the biggest cliche in the world to travel to India to meditate, but, well, hmm... sometimes cliches like that just attract me. (What can you do? I'm not going to lie here in my blog that there is not a happy little hippy girl full of cliches living inside of me. Because there is, so that you know.)

The truth is, I don't think I'm good at meditation. I know I'm out of practice with it, but honestly I was never good at it. I can't seem to get my mind to hold still. I mentioned this once to an Indian monk, and he said, "It's a pity you're the only person in the history of the world who ever had this problem."

But meditation was not the only interesting thought in this book. I liked especially this idea: 

Generally speaking, though, Americans have an inability to relax into sheer pleasure. Ours is an entertainment-seeking nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one. Americans spend billions to keep themselves amused with everything from porn to theme parks to wars, but that's not exactly the same thing as quiet enjoyment.

This one really made me to think. It's quite often that I let myself to be entertained thinking that "I deserve this joy in my life" but at the same time I don't give myself those things that would really make me happy. It's easy for me to give myself amusement, I feel that I really deserve it. But sadly enough it's hard to give myself feel the real pleasure, let alone the whole, true happiness, because I don't feel that I'm worth it. It's a really interesting thought. Quite scary too. Something that I have to think more...

Anyway, this book was very cute and funny. Not something that everybody should read, but for me right now, it was the right one. A piece of entertainment or pleasure or whatever I needed this week.