The big questions pop up as Julia Roberts attempts to 'find herself' in Eat Pray Love

Last week, amid the serenity of a rainy Spring weekend spent in Summertown, I made a terrible mistake: I watched the film Eat Pray Love on my own with nothing more than a pot of tea and a lemon drizzle cake to console me.

Why was this such a colossal error, I hear you ask? I’ll tell you why: watching a film about an unhappy 30-something woman, who decides to give up her apparently successful New York life as a well-paid writer to run off to ‘find herself’ is just... deflating.

Either you’re not as miserable as she is at the beginning but begin to feel as though you should be during the course of the drama or you are as miserable as her but not in a position – either financially, emotionally or physically – to elope.

After a brief fling with Rome she heads to Bali to meditate and begin the finding of herself, which is, let’s face it, what we’re all supposed to be doing. There’ll soon be an app for that: kind of like Where’s Wally – but instead of a man in a red hat and stripy top it will be you, captured on Google street map, looking lost on Cornmarket.

What concerns me is the Greener Grass Conflict that lies just beneath the surface of most of us: what if we were to take that job over there… what if we’d chosen a different career path… what if I ditched my entire existence in the vain hope that just across the North Sea lies my inner peace, my prince charming and an ability to eat as much pasta as I like and still maintain perfect pins like Julia Roberts? Surely I too could meet Javier-Beautiful-Bardem, insist he falls madly in love with me, while acquiring another language as easily as I’m picking up mosquito bites.

Besides bringing in revenue, I’m sure that these films exist to do one thing and one thing only: to make us question our lives, our choices, our direction – which is such an odd concept by the way, this notion that we have a direction, or are on a set course with a direction SOMEWHERE, as though SOMEWHERE is actually one place, out there, somewhere. If only we knew where, we’d get there quicker, we imagine.

I’ve done my fair share of searching and questioning and trying to work out WHO I AM. I don’t need a film to make that search look appealing, or to make travel seem so serene.

In my experience, travelling alone is seldom serene. Plus although I think travel is a wonderful experience, and can allow the space and time to recognise things about yourself you ordinarily wouldn’t, it’s not a magic bullet. You usually have to come home at some point, and put into action all of the life promises you’ve been making yourself.

Mainly, watching the film was a mistake because it made me realise how happy I am. Which is a dangerous realisation: the moment you think, ‘I’m happy’ is the moment you begin to question whether you’re right to be happy.

Shouldn’t you be wanting more? the film whispered to me over another slice of lemon drizzle. Don’t you want to be a bit lost again, walking around foreign youth hostels, trying to find a morsel of human connection and worrying about where your next pay slip is coming from…?

In fact, I’m probably ready for that mobile phone app now.

Cue: me, in a red wooly hat and stripy top, lost and wide-eyed on Cornmarket – without the perfect pins and sans Javier Bardem – and frantically trying to get phone signal…