In Eat Pray Love promotional posters, the nuns were cut out. Credit: IMDB
The 2008 crash remains the great turning-point, the before-and-after moment. It’s hard to imagine, for instance, a book like Eat, Pray, Love being published today. Elizabeth Gilbert’s self-help-memoir, which was published exactly 15 years ago, followed the author through an early-to-midlife crisis in which she spends four months in Italy eating carbs and sightseeing, four months at an Indian ashram learning the secrets of spiritual life, and the rest of the year in Indonesia resisting, then succumbing to, a heady romance with a Brazilian businessman. 12 million book sales and a Julia Roberts movie adaptation followed.
It isn’t just the ease of international travel that makes Eat, Pray, Love seem like a document from another era. It’s also the book’s unselfconsciousness about economic inequality — about the fact that you can only have this sort of adventure when you happen to have received, say, a $200,000 book advance. And if the book was “a voyage of self-discovery” (a phrase Gilbert used with hardly a trace of irony), it was also an ode to consumerism: the dream held out by travel agents — sunshine, hedonism and enlightenment rolled into one — has rarely found a more persuasive salesperson.
And yet for all that, Eat, Pray, Love possessed a kind of absurd magnificence. At the start of the book, Gilbert’s marriage is in crisis, and as she collapses onto her bathroom floor at 3am, sobbing uncontrollably, something wholly unexpected happens, like “one of those crazy astronomical super-events when a planet flips over in outer space for no reason whatsoever, and its molten core shifts”. For the first time in her life, she finds herself crying out, in fear, in desperation, in hope, to the creator of the universe.
What happens next isn’t quite Augustine’s Confessions. But there was an appealing sense in Eat, Pray, Love — a sense never quite lost even as Gilbert moved relentlessly onwards through the world’s finest gelaterias, yoga studios and beach bars, distributing her publisher’s vast wads of cash — that life itself is a stupendous gift. You have a body, so feast! You have a soul, so how could you possibly spend less than four months on trying to unlock the mystery of prayer? You have the capacity to love, so why not travel halfway around the planet for it?
Fiffeen years on, self-help has become a far more sensible affair. Or rather, it has been supplanted by “self-care” — those miniature, fine-tuned adjustments to soothe you through a demanding day. Instead of going on a voyage of self-discovery, people download mindfulness apps called things like “Ten Per Cent Happier”. Whereas Elizabeth Gilbert searched for a God who is “an experience of supreme love”, we have Marie Kondo telling us to throw more stuff away and Sarah Knight offering The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F***. The new mood was anticipated by the ironic subtitle of Oliver Burkeman’s 2011 post-self-help book Help!: How to Become Slightly Happier and Get a Bit More Done.
To the generation which has acquired its disposable income since Eat, Pray, Love appeared, Gilbert’s scheme must appear pretty dubious. Eat? No thanks — I’m fine with this kale juice. Love? Not likely: according to a recent survey, 20- and 30-something travellers “would rather improve mental health (30%), learn a new skill (29%) or get fit (24%) than find love (12%).” Pray? Well, in the next few weeks a book will be published which is in certain ways the opposite of Eat, Pray, Love.
True, Sarah Sands’ The Interior Silence: 10 Lessons from Monastic Life would also cost a fair amount to emulate: flights to Japan aren’t cheap, and nor, one imagines, is a stay at a Buddhist monastery in Koyasan. For Sands’ other nine lessons she visits religious houses of various, mostly Christian traditions in Italy, Spain, Egypt, Bhutan, France, Germany and Greece — and, as lockdown restrictions start to bite during the writing of the book, in Britain too. Even so, Interior Silence is less an extravagant journey in pursuit of sublime knowledge, more an accumulation of useful habits to help stay afloat.
From the harmony of the Japanese monastery, Sands concludes that tidying her handbag could be the key to a more ordered life. At the Abbaye Notre-Dame de Sénanque, she discovers that giving up caffeine and alcohol “brings a quietness of mind”. Sands’ monks and nuns teach her to ignore the news cycle, to practise patience, to enjoy simplicity. These are the small, familiar steps of self-care — and it’s not entirely clear how much Sands’ newfound tranquillity is the result of drinking deep from the wells of ancient knowledge, and how much it is just the usual effect of a really nice holiday.
Nevertheless, the book is gripping, both because of Sands’ witty, sometimes poignant prose, and as a fable of our times. In the 21st-century meritocracy, whose greatest prize is to have a fun, well-paid job which impresses strangers at social events, Sands is unquestionably one of the winners. As editor of the Evening Standard from 2012-17, she spends “every evening in theatres or restaurants or at parties” — some of them at the proprietor Evgeny Lebedev’s Umbrian castle:
It was my job as editor of the London newspaper to deliver Boris Johnson to these weekends. The preparations were elaborate, and our welcoming party would breathe more deeply when our cars finally accelerated up the avenue of cypresses, taking in the jasmine air, and preparing for a weekend of medieval splendour: feasting, dancing, boar hunting. I have a memory of a dishevelled Johnson chasing Evgeny’s wolf, also named Boris, because it had eaten his computer dongle.
Then, as editor of the Today Programme, Sands covers the edge-of-your-seat drama of post-Brexit politics, rising at 4.30 to “a frenzy of news wires and Twitter”, only returning home in the evening to catch up on emails. And how does it feel, this thrilling life at the centre of glamorous invite-only occasions and world-shaking political stories? Terrible, of course. The news becomes a numbing addiction. Sands’ mind fills with “noise, chaos and anxiety” to the point where she struggles to sleep. And then, among monks and nuns, she realises that with their lack of ambition, their small needs and simple lives, these people seem to have found happiness.
At moments, Sands hints that monastic living may have more to teach us than just some novel approaches to self-care. The book circles around the possibility of divine revelation, without quite deciding what to make of it. Sands quotes a phrase from St Thomas Aquinas, “the light of faith”, but doesn’t mention that he tends to use it in a fairly blunt way: by that light, he comments, “the human mind is directed to assent to such things as are becoming to a right faith, and not to assent to others.” Sands adopts a very different tone, as she looks out onto the old convent wall at the bottom of her garden:
I think of what St Thomas once called “the light of faith”. If there is a divine truth beyond knowledge and reason, then my wall, bright behind the silhouette of the yew tree and the big dark sky, seems a testament to it.
Like Eat, Pray, Love, Interior Silence is haunted by the possibility of finding God. But here the possibility fades away into a beautiful image, just as in the earlier book it dissolved into a consumerist paradise. Perhaps there are some questions which the self-help genre just isn’t designed to answer.
Dan Hitchens writes the newsletter ‘The Pineapple’ and is former editor of the Catholic Herald
ddhitchens 
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeIt seems to me that self help has always been meaningless, outside of its ability to transfer large amounts of money from the gullible to writers and publishers. As for Sarah Sands, how nice to travel around the world after a few years of purveying anti-Brexit propaganda for the BBC. There are no words to express the disgust that most of us feel.
The first key step in self help is to convince people they have a problem (when they probably don’t).
Life is not intended to be easy – meaningful, rewarding and occasionally pleasant but not easy. Politicians promise ‘easy’ and when it isn’t they blame you, they, anyone else so as to be unaccountable. The young, who are most likely to have accepted the politicians’ lie, must now find ‘truth’. But Lord forbid it be the church which the state has taught them must be separate and thus, never the answer.
“…self help has always been meaningless”
I profoundly disagree. Of course, there is the issue of definitions, but let’s justy be relaxed about that. Self-help means, literally, thinkgs you can do – yourself – that will help you. And, it is far from meaningless – and equally far from effective.
There are myriad things peopel canm do to help themselves, without needing any recourse to “professionals.” The key is to be thoughtful – and careful – about the self-help project you pick.
But to cite one simple example: if you suffer anxiety or depression, there are so many things you can and should try/do before reaching for the pills.
Well, yes, and all that is obvious. I was referring to the self help industry.
Not all self-help books are meaningless. I have read several, some struck a cord with me and many others didn’t. Sometimes you get an a-ha moment and sometimes you are left wondering what their story is all about. One of my favourite authors of self-help is Louise Hay, now deceased but she literally has helped millions of people.
Louise Hay is the epitome of self-help drivel. Self-worth is not derived from trying to brainwash yourself with positive affirmations which you don’t really believe.
Believe it or not, and airy-fairy as it sounds, positive affirmations will sink into simple minded you and actually register in your brain. Try it.
How can you say “meaningless”? Charles Manson is said to have been heavily influenced by How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. He gained many devoted followers and became famous.
I do love Dan Hitchens. Given the typical quality of their thought, we don’t hear enough from Christian writers and intellectuals.
Given the ‘quality’ of their ‘thought’ we hear far too much from Christian writers and intellectuals.
All this tells me is that modern middle class women are hollow, sad, anxious individuals that are taking down the west brick by brick. They should be at home raising families instead of whining in self books about career/life balances and their lack of a personal philosophy.
I’m going to assume this comment is ironic.
That is an awful lot to read into very little. And begs more questions than an encyclopaedia could answer.
I disagree with you Ian about your overall comment. However, I do think sometimes writing these books, is a way to make money and I also wonder how many write their own books or do they hire ghost writers?
Never forget that female corruption and decadence always begins with male corruption and decadence. Show me a generation of men that will only accept stay at home wives and channel their erotic loyalty to them only and I will show you the force that will remake the West.
Until then… beams, motes and eyes.
I must actually know or remember something in order to “never forget” it.
An old girl girl friend (and current friend) of mine gave me the “Eat, Pray, Love” book…I barely managed to finish it-the Bali bit at the end was perfectly awful, and the entire book was self-indulgent tripe-the literary equivalent of Kinkade paintings.
I had a tough time with EPL as well – the first third really was the self-indulgent, over-emotional tripe that you mention. After that, it did get a lot better – the characters were colourful and well-drawn and the places Elizabeth went were interesting. The key to it was to drop the expectation of some great big pearl of wisdom being dropped into your lap. It was just a nice, entertaining story. And sometimes that’s all I want from a book.
I am amazed that you even managed to start it.
-after reading it, so am I.
Quite. It baffles me that intelligent and apparently discerning people could ever imagine that such a book could be anything other than vacuous t0ss. What on Earth were they expecting?
I totally agree. And strictly speaking it is not really a self-help book. There is no protocol suggested- just one person’s self-indulgent narrative about her travels. How does that help anyone? Personally, I just don’t get it.
I couldn’t finish the book either; stopped reading in the first third of it actually, when she writes about her travels in Italy. I love good food but I hate gluttony more.
we’re a society with the luxury of basking in first-world problems, but lacking the self-awareness to realize it.
The very term self-help is egoic. It is all about me. The secret to happiness is discovering the humility to realise that we only exist as a part of an interconnected wall within which we learn to understand the meaning of life.
But the self-help movement which is essentially an extension of left-brained spirit-killing rationalist/materialist paradigm had its origins in the European Renaissance which was, at root, he loss of the Sacred Dimension of human existence-being.
But even that was the manifestation of a meme or collective state of mind that had been growing for at least a couple of hundred years or more.The Protestant “Reformation” which was and is a principal force in the West is another profound influence.
And isn’t the self-help the inevitable extension of Calvinism too!
Tradition and authority were thrown out. One was left with nothing but the individual sitting alone in a room reading and interpreting the Book/ Bible. Such a situation served for a little while until the the origins and contents of the Book was (necessarily) analyzed and came into doubt.
Therefore what real connection to Truth remains? What do we have now? The local dreadfully sane pastor or priest, who is just as much over-whemled as anyone else by the prevailing social minded doubt mind, by his or her own complications and unresolved problems, especially of an emotional-sexual nature – and he or she is supposed to help straighten you out?
I don’t think it’s the loss of a sacred dimension that’s the problem. That went long ago, when the theocratic element in society declined and we stopped being told what to think about the big questions of morality and ethics. (People didn’t accept that wnyway, but they didn’t dare say so). What has been in decline is the notion of society. Thatcher famously is supposed to have said it didn’t exist. And indeed this attitude underlies much of modern economic thinking, as the neoliberal poison has spread. Yet research has repeatedly shown that social ties improve mental and physical health.
People are social animals as well as individuals. Neglecting the social side means that people and families become interchangeable economic units, especially as families are now smaller. For example, getting on one’s bike to find a job these days probably means changing towns, one’s children’s schools, perhaps one’s spouse’s or partner’s job as well, etc. Thus, social ties are diminished, and social supports as well: if we’re all off on our bikes finding work miles away, we can’t also be round the corner from Gran when it’s old age care time.
The emphasis on individuals as the architects of their own success puts the responsibility for happiness on to them too. Hence the self-help industry, finding money-making opportunity where it can. Self-help gurus aren’t necessarily immune, though. Jordan Peterson, famous author of 12 principles for living, recently came out of rehab after treatment for drug addiction. Frankly, I’m not taking advice on how to live life from someone like that.
A famous physician and writer once said that everyone needs something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to. As recipes for a happy life go, this one is simple, and supported by actual evidence. Whether it can be turned into canned advice for a fee, I’m not sure, but no doubt some self-help guru has tried. When he got out of rehab.
I think perhaps Jordan Peterson became addicted to painkillers prescribed as treatment for a painful medical condition. I don’t think he’s necessarily ‘someone like that’!
I haven’t read her book so I can’t say for certain, but I doubt very much Ms. Sands stayed at a “Buddhist monastery” on Koyasan. I’m guessing she stayed at a shukubo (temple lodging) and spent time visiting temples (and the local convenience store for morning coffee). Unlike Minobusan, the center of Nichiren Shu Buddhism, Koyasan is very much on the foreign tourists’ beaten path.
There’s an elephant (lobster?) in the corner of the Self Help room and he’s made all these privileged wealthy western middle class women irrelevant by telling them to sit up straight with their shoulders back and clean their damn rooms.
I don’t want to sound out of touch but what’s wrong with C S Lewis. Old fashioned and I wince at some of his ideas on what women are like but good, bracing stuff that works. If you really want the hardcore spiritual stuff how about Thomas Merton?
I’ve always been amazed that people think they have to go round the world looking for ashrams and monasteries to find God. The truth is that if we repent of our sins, believe in Jesus Christ and ask to be filled with the Holy Spirit God will find us.
Wouldn’t it be easier for someone to give Him Google Maps? It sounds like a lot less bother all round.
Don’t worry. God has no trouble finding those He wants to find
Decent book here on how people can become addicted to self help books to the point that it messes them up even further.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38136826-help-me
And we are supposed to imagine that the media has our interests at heart.
Is it any wonder that the abbreviation “MSM” is loaded with such contempt? For the establishment it describes, from one side, and from the other side, contempt for anyone who uses the term.
Nothing quite like a bit of self-indulgent nonsense to make one feel better.
The idea of Sarah Sands as being representative of meritocracy is laughable
I’m rereading The Lord of the Rings. Now there’s a book (trilogy) with a bracing, expansive sense of a larger meaning & purpose, a proper adventure to live within…
Very sorry you are not still making headway on the Catholic Herald.
I heard Greg Gutfeld say some years ago that his back pain went away overnight when he read Somebody-or-Other’s book on back pain. I believed him because he had complained of back pain often enough, and was then so elated when it disappeared. Never having had any back problems, I paid no attention to the name of the book. Was that self-help? He didn’t mention any exercises. It sounded like enlightenment struck.
Either this is a celebration of the decadence and corruption of modern western thought, or a piece of subtle satire. I’m not sure people who write for the Catholic Herald do satire.
And then, dearreader, she wrote a book and capitali$ed on the happiness and simplicity of nuns, newly feted at dinner parties and more secure with a larger padding of cash.
I haven’t read the book either. Many may be cynical about self-help books. It may seem self-indulgent, however, they often point to something that is overlooked in life… that of looking at oneself. In the West we concentrate on the outer world… the material one, the capitalist modern life that doesn’t necessarily make people happier but creates misery in many. Consuming this and that, desiring this and that. We miss what is inside of us and forget to question our thoughts, fears, and belief systems to check whether they are true or false. As Socrates says: the unexamined life is not worth living.