Impending Rendezvous
I often wonder what determines which book we read after all the choice is humungous to say the least and in stark contrast to say deciding who to marry!
I would like to think that it was fate (and a colleague) that brought 'The Five People you meet in Heaven' by Mitch Albom before my eyes and finally in my hands.
The five people who Eddie meets in heaven teach him one lesson each. Needless to say that I was deeply carried away and ended up making up my own list of who I would like to meet. Of course, Eddie didn't know the first person he met during his stay on earth. Nonetheless, I could come up with only two - My paternal grandfather whose early demise is the biggest regret in my life to date as I could have learnt so much from him and the second is of course M. I need to know so much from her... make sense of the hardest time in my life and get a confirmation that all those times when I felt her presence she was indeed there.
Eddie learns the following invaluable lessons up in the heavenly abode:-
The Blue Man tells him that the five people who meet him here would each tell him their story which becomes part of his. Each would have crossed his path before they died, altering it forever in the process.
Lesson 1 - There are no random acts. wee are all connected. That you can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind.
Strangers are just family you have yet to come to know. No life is a waste. The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone.
Lesson 2 - The Captain tells Eddie that when you sacrifice some thing precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else.
Lesson 3 - Which was worse when left unexplained - A life, or a death?
Holdiong anger is a poison, It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the ahrm we do, we do to ourselves.
We move through places every day that would never have been if not for those who came before us.
Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them, They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them - a mother's approval, a father's nod - are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.
Through all the deprivation, Eddie privately adored his old man because all sons adore their fathers through even the worst behaviour. It is how they learn devotion. Before he can devote himself to God or a woman, a boy will devote himself to his father, even foolishly, even beyond explanation.
So Eddie says to his father (who can't hear him), "I didn't know, OK? I didn't know your life, what happened. I didn't know you. But you're my father. I'll let it go now, all right? All right? Can we let it go?"
Eddie never said anything he felt that deeply.
Lesson 4 - People say they "find" love, as if it were an object hidden by a rock. But love takes many forms, and it is never the same for any man and woman. What people find then is a certain love. Eddie found such love, a grateful love, a deep but quiet love, one that he knew, above all else, was irreplacable.
It never changes, when the groom lifts the veil, when the bride accepts the ring, the possibilities you see in their eyes, it's the same around the world.
Love.ike rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples with a soaking joy. But sometimes, under the angry heat of life, love dries on the surface and mist nourish from below, tending to its roots, keeping itself alive.
Lost love is still love. It takes a different form, that's all. You can;t see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those sensed weaken, another heightens. Memory. Menory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it. Life has to end, love doesn't.
Lesson 5 - The little girl who Eddie killed unknowingly is the one who ushers him into the heavens where Eddie finally is at peace with himself.
Silence is worse when you know it won't be broken. But in the end, Eddie and Marguerite make it together to home.
I would like to think that it was fate (and a colleague) that brought 'The Five People you meet in Heaven' by Mitch Albom before my eyes and finally in my hands.
The five people who Eddie meets in heaven teach him one lesson each. Needless to say that I was deeply carried away and ended up making up my own list of who I would like to meet. Of course, Eddie didn't know the first person he met during his stay on earth. Nonetheless, I could come up with only two - My paternal grandfather whose early demise is the biggest regret in my life to date as I could have learnt so much from him and the second is of course M. I need to know so much from her... make sense of the hardest time in my life and get a confirmation that all those times when I felt her presence she was indeed there.
Eddie learns the following invaluable lessons up in the heavenly abode:-
The Blue Man tells him that the five people who meet him here would each tell him their story which becomes part of his. Each would have crossed his path before they died, altering it forever in the process.
Lesson 1 - There are no random acts. wee are all connected. That you can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind.
Strangers are just family you have yet to come to know. No life is a waste. The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone.
Lesson 2 - The Captain tells Eddie that when you sacrifice some thing precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else.
Lesson 3 - Which was worse when left unexplained - A life, or a death?
Holdiong anger is a poison, It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the ahrm we do, we do to ourselves.
We move through places every day that would never have been if not for those who came before us.
Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them, They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them - a mother's approval, a father's nod - are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.
Through all the deprivation, Eddie privately adored his old man because all sons adore their fathers through even the worst behaviour. It is how they learn devotion. Before he can devote himself to God or a woman, a boy will devote himself to his father, even foolishly, even beyond explanation.
So Eddie says to his father (who can't hear him), "I didn't know, OK? I didn't know your life, what happened. I didn't know you. But you're my father. I'll let it go now, all right? All right? Can we let it go?"
Eddie never said anything he felt that deeply.
Lesson 4 - People say they "find" love, as if it were an object hidden by a rock. But love takes many forms, and it is never the same for any man and woman. What people find then is a certain love. Eddie found such love, a grateful love, a deep but quiet love, one that he knew, above all else, was irreplacable.
It never changes, when the groom lifts the veil, when the bride accepts the ring, the possibilities you see in their eyes, it's the same around the world.
Love.ike rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples with a soaking joy. But sometimes, under the angry heat of life, love dries on the surface and mist nourish from below, tending to its roots, keeping itself alive.
Lost love is still love. It takes a different form, that's all. You can;t see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those sensed weaken, another heightens. Memory. Menory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it. Life has to end, love doesn't.
Lesson 5 - The little girl who Eddie killed unknowingly is the one who ushers him into the heavens where Eddie finally is at peace with himself.
Silence is worse when you know it won't be broken. But in the end, Eddie and Marguerite make it together to home.
posted by optimism at 2:28 PM
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