KRISTA TIPPETT, HOST: Elizabeth Gilbert’s Name Is S

[music: “Sprouts in the Cracks in the Concrete” by Lullatone]

MS. TIPPETT: You can listen again and share this conversation with Elizabeth Gilbert through our website, onbeing.org.

I’m Krista Tippett. On Being continues in a moment.

[music: “Sprouts in the Cracks in the Concrete” by Lullatone]

MS. TIPPETT: I'm Krista Tippett, and this is On Being. Today, I’m talking with the author Elizabeth Gilbert about the nature of creativity. In life as in art, she says, it has less to do with passion than with choosing curiosity over fear.

MS. TIPPETT: There's also kind of a noble guilt that one can have in this culture. And those of us who are fortunate to be able to buy and read books like yours, talking about bringing forth the treasures within us, and I was just talking a minute ago about how we also tend to be very focused, and kind of the messaging that's coming towards us is very focused on the ruthless furnace of the world. How do you respond to the question of — this creativity you're talking about, is this a luxury for privileged people?

MS. GILBERT: No. This is a shared human inheritance because the evidence of that is — again, let us look to our ancestors. And I ask you and me right now to think back to our great-grandparents. And they were farmers and workers, and yet, they made beauty. They made it because it brought them joy. They made it as a currency in the communities in which they lived. They made it because of the pleasure of doing something that's better than it has to be.

So my grandmother, who made beautiful rag rugs and quilts — they're more beautiful than they need to be. And your history is filled with those people as well. And I would argue that most of the most beautiful and interesting things in the world that have ever been made were made by people who didn't have enough time, didn't have enough resources, didn't have probably any education.

This is something that belongs to human beings who are behaving in the way that human beings are designed to behave. Using your senses and your curiosity and your materials and whatever's at hand to alter your environment and make something more beautiful than it needs to be. That's who we are.

MS. TIPPETT: Yeah. That's really interesting to think about how — the way we have kind of dismissed art and creativity as a luxury is a way we've diminished ourselves.

MS. GILBERT: Oh, good Lord. In huge ways, yeah. Without a doubt.

MS. TIPPETT: I mean, I also feel like you don't make this connection overtly a lot, but I think that the notion of creative living and amplified existence, of creativity as a virtue for our public life as well as for private life, is very resonant right now, especially when you define it as a life driven more by courage than by fear, and what grows out of that. And you say, “I want to live in a society filled with people who are curious and concerned about each other rather than afraid of each other.” So kind of taking this virtue of investigation, of that gentle friend of curiosity as something that we can live by, would be good for us collectively, right?

MS. GILBERT: Sure. It's a public service. [laughs]

MS. TIPPETT: It's a public — yeah. Right?

MS. GILBERT: Well, I mean, I do think this is a very clear thing. Terrified people make terrible decisions. Terror and fear make you irresponsible. They make you not think very clearly, right? And they make you willing to do almost anything to get rid of that awful feeling. And we've seen people do that on the individual level, and we've seen cultures do that. And we've seen politicians who find ways to exploit terror and fear in order to get short-term power or sometimes long-term power. Because if you can figure out how to hold the reins of other people's fear, then you can control them for a while. And so one of the very most powerful ways to not end up being controlled by that is to remain more curious than you are afraid. I think any time in the community that there's anybody who's keeping their head, I think it's a benefit to everyone around them. I think everything is contagious. Our fear is contagious, but our courage also is. And our courage makes other people be able to be more brave, and come out of their houses, and come out of their shells, and out of their fear.

MS. TIPPETT: I think in this piece I'm looking at, you were telling a story about being in Indonesia in 2002. And — so when did you publish Eat, Pray, Love? Was that 2006?

MS. GILBERT: Yeah. So, that trip I was talking about in that article was actually not my Eat, Pray, Love trip. That was a...

MS. TIPPETT: So that was another time when your life looked like a dropped pie? Everything was on the floor in pieces?

MS. GILBERT: [laughs] Yes.

MS. TIPPETT: [laughs] You've had more than one of those?

MS. GILBERT: Well, actually, I would say that that was the middle of the period of my life that looked like a dropped pie, and Eat, Pray, Love was the end of that life. So this period that I was talking about was very much — I was still in the worst of what I ended up discussing in Eat, Pray, Love. That was dropped pie central right then. I would say that was the worst part of my life.

MS. TIPPETT: Right. Bad divorce, losing your house, losing your husband, losing your money, losing your friends, losing sleep, losing yourself. And then this stranger, this woman just kind of gives you solace and nurses you back to life. And you said — and I feel like you've had a lot of those experiences, partly because you put yourself out there. [laughs]

To be needy, to be alone in strange places. But I just love this. I want to read it. You said, “I want to live in a world full of explorers and generous souls, rather than people who have voluntarily become prisoners of their own fortresses. I want to live in a world full of people who look into each other's faces along the path of life and ask, ‘Who are you, my friend, and how can we serve each other?’”

MS. GILBERT: Yeah, that woman was so extraordinary. I had gone to — I had a very dumb idea, it turned out, that what I really needed was to just be alone and as far away from everyone in the world as I could get. And I went to this island off the coast of Lombok in Indonesia and rented a thatched cottage on the beach for $10 a day, and I decided for 10 days I wasn't going to speak. I don't advise that if you're in the state that I was in. [laughs]

What I probably really needed was to be around community, and maybe some therapists. Putting a magnifying lens on yourself when you're in distress like that can be very hard. And I ended up getting sick. And I used to take a walk around this island every day because it was such a small island. You could walk it every day. And it was a little Muslim fishing village. And there was this woman who used to be standing outside her house every time I walked by, and she would see me and smile at me. And she was the only human-to-human point of contact that I had during that time.

And when I got sick, and I was stuck in my little shack very, very ill — I was afraid I had malaria, I was so sick — she came and found me. She had been keeping an eye on me, and I didn't keep my schedule. I usually walked around the island at dawn and at dusk. And when she didn't see me, she came and found me. And when she saw how sick I was, she brought me food. And I think — I've never forgotten this woman. And what I think I learned from her was pay attention to what's happening in your community. That's what it means to be deeply engaged with the place where you live. Such that you will see when someone is in trouble. And there's ways that you can reach toward people rather than away from them. And you can do that. I know we talk often in this society about how terrible social media and the Internet is, but used properly, that, too, can become a tool of outreach, a way of knocking on someone's door.

MS. TIPPETT: Yeah, we get to make it what we want it to be. It's us.

MS. GILBERT: We get to make — it's just us. And she set a real tone for me of how to be not so buried in your own problems or in your own distractions that you are incapable of seeing what's right in front of you and who's right in front of you.

MS. TIPPETT: Mm-hmm. It's also actually a wonderful example of how when we kind of step outside ourselves — I mean, that was a creative act, right? It was an act of curiosity.

MS. GILBERT: Well, it's because the universe is looking for collaborators because creation's not finished. It's not something that happened in seven days and ended. It's an ongoing story that we're part of. And it's a much more interesting way to be part of that story to work in collaboration, and in partnership, and in friendly curiosity with it than to be terrified of it. I mean, look, life is a very risky affair.

And what could be more fascinating and terrifying than this reality about a human existence, which is that literally anything can happen to literally anybody at literally any moment. [laughs] And to live in the awareness of that without needing to drown it out, or dull it out, or suffocate it, or deny it is quite an exhilarating way to live. And then you can start to participate as much as possible in how that story unfolds.

MS. TIPPETT: I don't want to finish talking to you without kind of noting the irony of the trajectory of your career and your persona and success as a writer. It was kind of interesting to me. I didn't really understand how much you had really written a lot about men and for men, and been a journalist, and been — I don't know, what is it? You once said you were like the only girl in the room a lot. [laughs]

MS. GILBERT: Mm-hmm.

MS. TIPPETT: And so that's not really the trajectory of, I think, what people would expect of this person who eventually writes Eat, Pray, Love. And ironically, that is such a phenomenally successful project. But you said once it had not escaped your attention that when you wrote about a man's emotional journey, they gave you the National Book Award nomination.

But when you wrote about a woman's emotional journey, they “shunted you into the chick-lit dungeon.” And I sense that you've — this has been part of your kind of growth and reflection out of this. And I wrestle with this too with my work, like kind of pushing back against the idea that there's something unserious about talking about these things. And — yeah. So I would love to draw you out a little bit on that.

MS. GILBERT: Yeah. Well, I spent my 20s writing about men for men. And I wanted to. And it was very much a reflection of where I was in my life at that time. I was really interested in masculinity, and I think the reason that I was is because I wanted to be a guy. And the reason I wanted to be a guy — and I don't mean literally and certainly that's a very serious situation when somebody's born in a woman's body and wants to be a man. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is I wanted to live the way men live. And the reason for that was because it was better. And I grew up watching what many of us grew up watching, which was men who had a great deal of freedom and women who followed them around and took care of them and took care of their every need. And when I looked at those two models, one of them seemed a lot better than the other one. [laughs] Very clearly.

And so I just threw myself into men's worlds. I worked in bars. I worked on a ranch in Wyoming for a long time. I became a writer for GQ, and Esquire, and Spin, very much men's worlds.

MS. TIPPETT: That's right.

MS. GILBERT: I mean, I threw myself, not only into men's worlds, but into men's worlds where they were spending their life studying what is masculinity too, right? And examining that question again and again, what it means to be a man. I was just as interested in that as they were. And I felt comfortable in those worlds. And I mean, I even did a story for GQ once where I dressed up as a man for a week, and lived as a man in New York, and felt what that felt like, which interestingly, I didn't enjoy because I felt very constrained in that gender once I was in it. [laughs]

I much preferred being a woman among men, than being a sort of fake man among men. But what happened, I think, with Eat, Pray, Love is that it was a time in my life where I sort of came out of the closet as a woman. And I needed to because the questions that I was grappling with were very much women's questions. And there are certainly universal spiritual questions that I was grappling with, but the main one that I was grappling with and what ended my marriage was the question of whether or not to become a mother. And certainly that is the sort of ultimate woman's question. What does it mean if I'm a woman who doesn't have children? What does it mean if I take a different path? Am I still a woman? These are all, in a way, gendered questions.

And that led me to write Eat, Pray, Love. And although now we can say, “God, that just was such a commercial success, it just seems so obvious now.” [laughs] At the time, I was taking a very big risk because I quit my excellent job at GQ, and I took a very different voice on. And whatever acclaim I had in the world, or however I was known, I was not known as a woman who would write a book like that. So it felt very risky to do it, but I also didn't really have a choice. And I think, in the end, it comes down to that. And then, of course, I did get typecast as a chick lit writer. And I — that was year zero. Like all of a sudden, my whole history disappeared, and I just showed up as that person. And I've sort of remained that person.

No matter what I do from this point forward, I will still always be the woman who wroteEat, Pray, Love, which is fine with me. But I'm going to continue to write the books that I'm called to write. I'm going to continue to speak about the questions that ignite and illuminate my existence within myself and in the world. I'm going to continue to serve the community who has gathered around me.

[music: “Spring Rain” by Lullatone]

MS. TIPPETT: I'm Krista Tippett, and this is On Being. Today, exploring creativity and curiosity with author Elizabeth Gilbert.

[music: “Spring Rain” by Lullatone]

MS. TIPPETT: I feel one of the paradoxes in your life and in kind of the spirit and presence you bring into the world is you are an explorer, you're a traveler, you're a famous traveler, and a famous explorer, I think, both literally and also in terms of your life as a writer. I also experience you — from afar — but experience you as someone who is so completely at home in yourself, very exuberantly at home. And you've talked about, in those wild years that followed the success of Eat, Pray, Love, that finding your way home, that finding your way back home, that that was something you understood to be something you had to do.

I don't know. I just want to name that, and I guess I'm curious if that is a way — or how else you would want to talk about, through all of this that you've lived and created, and also all the things you're hearing and picking up in the world now as you move through it, as this person kind of in conversation with our culture, what are you learning about that you didn't know before about what it means to be human?

MS. GILBERT: I think — here's what I'm learning, and here's what I'm seeing, and here's what I'm lately focusing on and maybe even thinking about writing about. I feel like everything we want is on the other side of this dark river of self-hatred that is so prevalent in ourselves and in our culture. There's a story about the Dalai Lama that when he first came to the West and somebody in the audience raised their hand and said, “What do you think about self-hatred?”

The whole sort of conference ended for a while while he had to have a couple of translators sit there and try to explain to him how a human being could be taught to hate himself. And he was so — he just said — there's this sort of transcript of his conversation in that moment of him saying, “This is very concerning.” You know? [laughs]

And I see self-loathing everywhere I look in so many different forms. And it's so — it breaks my heart. And I also know self-loathing because I have been in it. Anybody who's been in depression knows what self-hatred is. In many ways, depression is — the best definition of it is anger turned inward. So, there's this battle that's going on within you where you become a rival of yourself and an enemy of yourself. And what transformed my life about that journey that I took with Eat, Pray, Love were those four months that I spent in India where I had to be alone with myself, and we really made a peace accord. And when I say myself, I should say my selves. Because we're not a self, we're selves.

And one by one, I really went around to all my selves and we shook hands and made peace with each other and said, “We're not going to operate against each other anymore. This has got to be a better neighborhood to live in. [laughs] We have to put down the weapons. We have to put down the old complaints. We have to put down the perfectionism. We have to put down the judgement. We have to put this stuff away because we're doing such tremendous harm to this poor being, Liz, who has to carry this war around within her.” And so, I really came away from that trip having befriended — and the word “friendly” — I keep using it in this in conversation. And I use it a lot.

MS. TIPPETT: It's lovely, it's lovely.

MS. GILBERT: It's a wonderful word, right?

MS. TIPPETT: It's another gentle word like “curiosity.”

MS. GILBERT: I think friendliness is a nicer way to think about it. Can you be a little bit of a better friend to yourself? Would you ever allow a friend to speak of themselves the way you do in your interior moments? And so that's what changed everything. And even in the craziness after Eat, Pray, Love happened, I think part of the reason that I didn't get lost in that was because of the friendship that I'd cultivated with this person who I am. And carrying that person around in a friendly way made those years easier than they might have been. And so sometimes people will say to me, “God, your life must be so crazy. Your life must have been so crazy after Eat, Pray, Love.” And honestly, my thought is, “No, the craziness was before.” The craziness was what you didn't see, what was going on in between my ears. That was the insanity.

And when that's gone, then everything else that happens can be sort of ridden, and sometimes — as Jack Gilbert would say — enjoyed. Sometimes you can even risk delighting in it. But it's that spirit of stubborn gladness and friendly curiosity that I think is at the basis of “ahimsa” also, right? That you're a friend not only to the world, but to yourself. And there, you can find your way home, I think, in almost all circumstances. I hope. [laughs] Because I don't know any other way. And that's the best I've got.

MS. TIPPETT: I've lived a while at this point too, and I don't think I have self-hatred, and I'm not sure — it's hard to identify with that even though I would absolutely define some of my younger self in that way. But I — at the same time, you have this line about — and this is, again, about emboldening creativity, creative living, this way we can move through the world.

And you say as kind of “coming to the point where you can decide that the work wants to be made and it wants to be made through you.” And I'll just say even as somebody who feels like I've done a lot of work on befriending myself, but that's still a hard statement to claim for me and I think for a lot of people. It's an aspiration to be able to feel that way, to trust that.

MS. GILBERT: What gets me through those 90 percent of it being boring part of creativity without turning it into angst anymore — and I say “anymore” because I used to do it — is that faith that the work wants to be made, and it wants to be made through me. And so when it's not coming, and it's not working, and it's not being good, and I'm stuck in a problem around the creativity, it's a very important shift in my life over the years to not think that I'm being punished or that I'm failing, but to think that this thing, this mystery that wants communion with me is trying to help me.

And it hasn't abandoned me. It's nearby. And it wants — it came to me for a reason. That's what I always think when I'm working on a project and it's not working. I think — I will speak to the idea and say, “You came to me for a reason.” But in the meantime, I'll come to my desk every day with the faith that you are also at my desk every day.

And that the two of us, this human being who is laboring and this mystery who's presenting itself toward me in whatever language it's able to, whatever signals, and clues, and hints, and inspirations, and the sense of obsession, and all the ways that inspiration comes to us, that it wants me to be with it. And somehow, if I'm patient, and it's constant, the two of us, the idea and me, will figure out how to make something in the world. And through that process, I will become a deeper and truer version of myself. And so, regardless of how the outcome turns, it will have been worth doing just for the communion with the mystery and the idea. And I can't think of a better way to live than to just keep doing that.

[music: “The Stars In Spring” by Epic45]

MS. TIPPETT: Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of seven books, including Eat, Pray, Love, the novel The Signature of All Things, and most recently, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear.

[music: “The Stars In Spring” by Epic45]

MS. TIPPETT: At onbeing.org, you can sign up for a weekly email from us, a Letter from Loring Park. In your inbox every Saturday morning — it's a poetic, curated list of the best of what we are reading and publishing, including writings by our columnists. Find this and much more at onbeing.org.

[music: “The Stars In Spring” by Epic45]

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