Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about “my word.” For any of you that have ever read Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, you may be familiar with the passage in which Liz is sitting with her new Italian friend, Giulio, who is trying to explain to Liz why she might be feeling separated from the city of Roma. He simply says, “Maybe you and Rome just have different words” (103).
Different words. Different words? I paused at this, and then, like Liz, questioned in curiosity what he meant by “different words.” Giulio continues,
…Every city has a single word that defines it, that identifies most people who live there. If you could read people’s thoughts as they were passing you on the streets of any given place, you would discover that most of them are thinking the same thought…
Liz presses on in this passage, asking Giulio to elaborate on what Rome’s identifying word was. Giulio nonchalantly responds,
SEX.
This isn’t what was captivating about this passage to me. What really made me think was Liz’s personal reflection that followed:
…Now if you are to believe Giulio, that little word–SEX–cobbles the streets beneath your feet in Rome, runs through the fountains here, fills the air like traffic noise. Thinking about it, dressing for it, seeking it, considering it, refusing it, making a sport and game out of it–that’s all anybody is doing.
Not only is Liz’s imagery scrumptious, but the connection she made between a person’s word and their inner-most self is what really captivated me. It isn’t that your word simply describes you; rather, you own your word. You are your word. You possess every quality of your word to the point that your word and you are interchangeable.
After reading (and digesting) this, I couldn’t help but wonder what my word is. Passion? Determination? Faith?
Towards the end of her journey, Liz chooses the word “antevasin” as her self-identifier–a Sanskrit word meaning “one who lives at the border.”
While I haven’t discovered my word quite yet, my plan in the meantime is to continue eating and praying and loving. -KB