Mar 06, 2005 03:45 AM
5109 Views
(Updated Mar 06, 2005 03:47 AM)
''Each of us was in your life for a reason. You may not have known the reason at the time, and that is what heaven is for. For understanding your life on earth.''
''All endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time...''
-The Five People You Meet In Heaven
Right now when I am writing this review, I am wondering as to why am I doing it. Will writing this thing have an impact on my afterlife. Does it have any reason to it? Also the day to day things that I do, the various people I meet everyday, what is their significance in my life? We meet many people in our various phases of life from childhood to adolescence, some we remember rest we forget.
We sometimes wonder what is LIFE all about? Sometimes we feel the life we are living is useless, it has no meaning. Also the various people that we encounter & various events that phase our life too seem meaningless at times. We always wonder when we die what will happen, whom will we meet in HEAVEN, if at all we go there?
Well this are some of the intriguing questions that fascinate most of us. Well no definite answer exists for the above questions. All religions have their own theory.No one living right now has ever experienced LIFE AFTER DEATH.
In his latest book Mitch Albom the famous author of Tuesdays With Morrie has come up with a rather unusual theory about life after death.How did Albom think about such a theory? Albom does not purport to have had a vision or some special inspiration, divine or otherwise.
Albom says his portrayal of heaven is based on a ''guess'' or ''wish'' and that the point of the story is to assist those like the Eddie in the book and Albom's real-life uncle, also named Eddie (to whom the book is dedicated), who feel their lives unimportant, to realize that their lives really have an importance, a tremendous value and are worthy of appreciation.
The story is about a lonely war veteran named Eddie, the head of the maintenance of a park named Ruby Pier that existed since his birth. His father owned it.Eddie feels that he has not achieved anything in his life. His dream to become an engineer was dashed by war injuries and the responsibilities that befell him at the time of his father's final illness and death. His war experiences and leg injury darkened his view of life and sapped it of joy.
The depression that enveloped him was incomprehensible to his father and led to their estrangement. On top of everything else, he lost his loving, all-accepting wife when she was a mere 47, leaving him alone for the last 35 years of his life. He had a low opinion of himself, his work and the life that he led. Yet, Eddie was a good man, who was very good to his family and his wife. But unfortunately on his eighty third birthday he dies in a tragic car accident trying to save a little girl from a falling cart.
With his final breath, he feels two small hands and nothing. He awakens in the afterlife where he learns that Heaven is NOT a lush Garden of Eden but a place where your earthly life is explained to you by five people who were in it.
This people may have been loved ones or distant strangers. Yet each of them changed Eddie's path forever sometimes unknowingly. From each of the five persons the late Eddie encounters in turn, he learns something different about himself and its significance to his life and about life itself.
He is awakened to his own worth and the value of his life. He learns about the interrelationship of all lives, about sacrifice, the everlasting value of love, the poisonness of lingering anger and, finally, about how his daily hum-drum, tedious daily routine had in fact fulfilled his life's intended purpose of keeping Ruby Pier's rides safe, and a source of joy, for generations of children.
Well the book is series of puzzle with each person building the final piece. When Eddie meets the last person the entire puzzle is solved and he gets the answer to all his queries. The book is a fantastic journey into the inner intricacies about a journey called LIFE. It gives an insight of what ''REAL'' Heaven might turn out to be. It helps us to value our lives & understand it better.
Highly Recommended for people who want some real understanding about their lives. Go ahead and enjoy the journey. Wish you a BON VOYAGE!!!
