“Today will be different. Today I will be present. Today, anyone I speak to, I will look them in the eye and listen deeply. Today I’ll play a board game with Timby. I’ll initiate sex with Joe. Today I will take pride in my appearance. I’ll shower, get dressed in proper clothes, and change into yoga clothes only for yoga, which today I will actually attend. Today I won’t swear. I won’t talk about money. Today there will be an ease about me. My face will be relaxed, its resting place a smile. Today I will radiate calm. Kindness and self-control will abound. Today I will buy local. Today I will be my best self, the person I’m capable of being. Today will be different.”

Eleanor’s promise to do things differently at the beginning of the novel uses repetition to show that she is dedicated to making changes to herself. This passage explores The Gap Between Who One Is and Who One Wishes to Be by showing that Eleanor struggles with some habits that have harmed her. It also indicates The Tension Between the Self and Family by implying that she has difficulty connecting with her husband and son because of these habits.

“If I’m forced to be honest, here’s an account of how I left the world last week: worse, worse, better, worse, same, worse, same. Not an inventory to make one swell with pride. I don’t necessarily need to make the world a better place, mind you. Today, I will live by the Hippocratic oath: first do no harm.

How hard can it be? Dropping off Timby, having my poetry lesson (my favorite part of life!), taking a yoga class, eating lunch with Sydney Madsen, whom I can’t stand but at least I can check her off the list (more on that later), picking up Timby, and giving back to Joe, the underwriter of all this mad abundance.”

Eleanor’s description of her previous week shows her tendency to cause problems for herself and others, developing The Gap Between Who One Is and Who One Wishes to Be and The Tension Between the Self and Family. Eleanor’s rhetorical “How hard can it be?” shows how much she underestimates the difficulty of self-improvement and foreshadows the derailment of most of Eleanor’s plans for the day.

“As everybody knows, being raised Catholic with half a brain means becoming an atheist.”

Eleanor’s assertion that Joe’s atheism is a natural conclusion to his Catholic upbringing highlights her own perception of religion as ridiculous and illogical. As she reveals later, this perception was one of the things that Eleanor and Joe bonded over when they first met.