Eat Pray Love or whatever you are interested in

I saw Eat Pray Love... liked it... and while the movie is a bit slow especially when gorgeous Javier Bardem comes in, the movie raised certain questions for me .... ofcourse the movie is about a woman's quest to find herself and to move on with her life... a situation that me and most of my girl friends have faced one time or the other in their lives.... so to that extent I could relate to the angst of not knowing what one is to do and where one is to go... and while I have overcome such existential questions to some extent in my life my quest for the real purpose of my life continues....

While I will come to the real learnings from the movie in another post the first question that struck me is this:

Why is it that every movie, serial, story ends with one finding your soul mate? Take serials such as Sex and the City, friends, or even how I met your mother - all of them ended with the characters finding their loves and beginning their happily ever after story ? For instance would there have been a story like Eat, Pray Love if finally she didnt find love? Would it have been the NY best seller if in the end she figured out that the biggest problem in her life was her relationships and she didnt want to venture into that territory anymore?

Would I have even been interested in reading that book?

So what is ultimately the message of such books and serials? that till you find love, you are really searching for yourself? and once that mythical love comes along, in a very Jerry Maguirish way, that love completes you? So you no longer have to go around the world to find yourself? that no matter your flaws, you can just stop bettering yourself since the purpose of your life (which was to find your soul mate) has been achieved? So you might be a self serving pig but since you have someone to love you you really can afford to be obnoxious to everyone else?

Does marriage and love really mean the end of your quest for self? Does it mean that one has solved all the formulas to deliver a perfectly rounded up number?

Or is it simply that once you are married or in love you really dont have time to spend on self? You are so caught up with the new identity that you are constantly pushing the self back?

I am not sure... the romantic in me wont read a book unless the perfect love comes to the door step.... but a part of me also doesnot like the newly minted fairy tales - which seem to camoflage the earlier messages of fairy tales like Cindrella, by putting the prince and the princess in modern settings such as new york and in various locations around the world such as India and Indonesia.

I am not sure I am making myself clear - but in stories such as Eat Pray Love, i see a very discomforting message....