Book Review: Close to the Bone, Lisa Ray
As I was approaching the last 50 pages of Close to the Bone, I sensed a dread in me. I didn’t want it to end. I wanted it to go on and on, to be there for me as a comforting friend, a guide, a mentor to my soul.
Since the past several years, I have worked ceaselessly on the growth of my mind, heart and soul, I have abided by following strictly on Buddha’s path- the path of truth, honesty, courage. Any setbacks, failures, stresses I have tried facing with a smile on my face, and a kindness in my heart. And it has led me somewhere, but I am still not sure where exactly. Maybe because distractions and life events again bring us back to square one.
But this journey of Lisa Ray, the supermodel blew me away. There is an amazing tenacity with which she single-mindedly pursued one goal, ONLY one and achieved it.
What is that goal you’d ask? The goal of coming home to ourselves. In our own bodies. To feel whole. To know that there is more to us than the fragmented bits that we hurriedly stitch together every morning to allow us to have a pleasant-enough/ tolerable day. To immerse ourselves so deeply in our inner work, that when we finally near the end of the journey, months, years or a lifetime later, depending on how much trauma and pain we managed to collect on this path of life, we feel, like I said, WHOLE. Not unworthy, ashamed, fearful, stressed, judged, less than others around us, but whole: completely at peace with ourselves and our journey. Whether that journey was exactly like the next person’s or completely different and unique then becomes immaterial.
And how is this achieved one would ask? By looking within. Most of us don’t have turbulent enough lives to demand this level of work, but Lisa did. Enduring several heartaches in the form of her mother’s ill health and eventual death, her own inclination for bad and toxic relationships, surviving cancer, being in a line of work where you are constantly judged for your looks and character- one can only imagine what all this would do to a person.. Break them.
But she realized very quickly that this wasn’t how she intended to live her life. Success and fame were meaningless without the lightness in her heart, the gaiety in her laughter and the innocence that is inherent in us all…And thus started her journey inwards, which she has penned beautifully in this gem of a memoir!
Spanning across countries and cities, from Canada to Dharamshala, from Bombay to Nelson, this would surely also delight the traveler in you.
Under whatever garb, using whatever route, the end aim for each of us is to find that inner joy, which life seems to sap away. I suppose ultimately that’s what we all are here for. And once we have it back, life may once again become the continual beautiful game it was when were little children, immersing ourselves in muddy games, reaching home with clean clothes gone filthy and being the happiest for it. 😊
As T.S. Eliot rightly said,
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
