the five people you meet in heaven Tuesday, July 13, 2004
just wanna share this really wonderful book by Mitch Albom.. its called "The five people you meet in heaven" its a really wonderful book.. everyone should read it.. although i prefer the other book by Mitch, tuesdays with morrie however this book taught me some lessons too..
things like.. no one story stands alone.. sometimes you gotta make sacrifices for others.. big sacrifices.. and you never know the sacrifices that other did for you.. learning to forgive is the best antidote to all your sufferings..
these were some of the lessons that the 5 peope eddie met in heaven taught him.. how they helped him make sense of his life.. the meaning behind all the happenings.. and he finally realised that all the mundane things that he had been doing routinely everyday were actually not as insignificant as he thought they were, for they helped to preserve the lives and heppiness of others, whether the others know or appreciate it or not..its really a "chim" story.. and i am sure that when i read the book some years later.. there will be other lessons that i will learn from it that i have not learnt now.. so i would like to share some nice phrases from the book.. it's be such a waste to keep them confined to the dead pages of the book..
"Fairness does not govern life and death. If it did, no good person would ever die young."
"The human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and between missed, lives are changed. "
"When lightning strikes a minute after you are gone, or an airplance crahses that you might have been on. When your colleague falls ill and you do not. We think such things are random. But there is a balance to it all. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole."
"Strangers are jsut family you have yet to come to know."
"Sacrifice is a part of life. Its supposed to be. Its not something to regret. It's something to aspire to. Little sacrifices, big sacrifices."
"Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else."
"All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair."
"Through it all, despite it all, Eddie privately adored his old man, because sons will 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."
"All parents damage their children. This was their life together. Neglect. Violence. Silence. And now, someplace beyond death, Eddie slumped against a stainless steel wall and dropped into a snowbank, stung again by the denial of a man whose love, almost inexplicably, he still coveted, a man ignoring him, even in heaven. His father. The damage done."
"Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. The moments which 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."
"He acted on impulse. A bad impulse. Your father acted on impulse too, and while his first impulse was to kill, his final impulse was to keep a man alive."
"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. They truly believe their love and their marriage is going to break all the records."
"Love, like 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 must nourish from below, tending to its roots, keeping itself alive."
"At one point, he asked his wife if God knew he was here. She smiled and said, 'Of course,"even when Eddie admitted that some of his life he'd spent hiding from God, and the rest of the time he thought he went unnoticed."
"Lost love is still love. It takes a different form, that's all. You can't see their smile or bring then food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those senses weaken, another heightens. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. Your nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it. Life has to end. Love doesn't. "
"You made me love you. I didn't want to do it. I didn't want to do it. You made me love you, and all the time you knew it, and all the time you knew it..."
"And in that line now was a whiskered old man, with a linen cap and a crooked nose, who waited in a place called the Stardust Band Shell to share his part of the secret of heaven: That each affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one."
