2. No story sits by itself. Sometimes stories meet at corners and sometimes they cover one another completely, like stones beneath a river.
3. Well. People often belittle the place where they were born. But heaven can be found in the most unlikely corners. And heaven itself has many steps.
4. There are five people you meet in heaven. 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.
5. This is the greatest gift God can give you: to understand what happened in your life. To have it explained. It is the peace you have been searching for.
6. Take one story, viewed from two different angles. It is the same day, the same moment, but one angle ends happily, and the other ends badly.
7. You are here so I can teach you something. All the people you meet here have one thing to teach you. That there are no random acts. That we are all connected. That you can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind.
8. "Fairness," he said, "does not govern life and death. If it did, no good person would ever die young".
9. Look at the mourners. Some did not even know me well, yet they came. Why? Did you ever wonder? Why people gather when others die? Why people feel they should? It is because 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 being missed, lives are changed.
10. You say you should have died instead of me. But during my time on earth, people died instead of me, too. It happens every day. When lightning strikes a minute after you are gone, or an airplane crashes 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. It is why we are drawn to babies and to funerals.
11. A: I still don't understand. What good came from your death?
B: You lived
A: But we barely knew each other. I might as well have been a stranger
B: Strangers... are just family you have yet to come to know.
12. No life is a waste. The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone.
13. War could bond men like a magnet, but like a magnet it could repel them, too. The things they saw, the things they did. Sometimes they just wanted to forget.
14. His running was over. His dancing was over. Worse, for some reason, the way he used to feel about things was over, too. He withdrew. Things seemed silly or pointless. War had crawled inside of Eddie, in his leg and in his soul. He learned many things as a soldier. He came home a different man.
15. If I couldn't keep you alive, I thought I could at least keep you together.
16. "I took your leg," the Captain said, quietly, "to save your life".
17. Time is not what you think. Dying? Not the end of everything. We think it is. But what happens on earth is only the beginning.
18. "SACRIFICE," the Captain said. "You made one. I made one. We all make them. But you were angry over yours. You kept thinking about what you lost. You didn't get it. Sacrifice is a part of life. It's supposed to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to aspire to. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices. A mother works so her son can go to school. A daughter moves home to take care of her sick father".
19. Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else.
20. "I shot you, all right," he said, "and you lost something, but you gained something as well. You just don't know it yet. I gained something, too. I got to keep my promise. I didn't leave you behind".
21. Through it all, despite it all, Eddie privately adored his old man, because sons will adore their fathers through even the worst behavior. 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.
22. "You have peace," the old woman said, "when you make it with yourself".
23. The worst part is not the sleeplessness. The worst part is the general darkness the dream leaves over him, a gray film that clouds the day.
24. Things that happen before you are born still affect you. And people who come before your time affect you as well.
25. 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.
26. "He was hard on you," the old woman said. "Perhaps you were hard on him, too.
27. It was wrong. But things are not always what they seem.
28. "Better," she said, "to be loyal to one another".
29. Silence was his escape, but silence is rarely a refuge. His thoughts still haunted him.
30. Which was worse when left unexplained: a life, or a death?
31. Holding 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 harm we do, we do to ourselves. Forgive, Edward. Forgive.
32. That's because no one is born with anger. And when we die, the soul is freed of it. But now, here, in order to move on, you must understand why you felt what you did, and why you no longer need to feel it.
33. "When he died," Eddie said, "he took part of me with him. I was stuck after that".
34. "I was angry with you, Dad. I hated you. You beat me. You shut me out. I didn't understand. I still don't understand. Why did you do it? Why?" He drew i long painful breaths. "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 i go now, all right? All right? Can we let it go?"
35. 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. And Eddie found a certain love with Marguerite, a grateful love, a deep but quiet love, one that he knew, above all else, was irreplaceable. Once she'd gone, he'd let the days go stale. He put his heart to sleep.
36. 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.
37. "Lost love is still love, Eddie. 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 senses weaken, another heightens. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it.
38. "Life has to end," she said. "Love doesn't".
39. It is never hard to act ordinary if you feel ordinary.
40. A: I was sad because I didn't do anything with my life. I was nothing. I accomplished nothing. I was lost. I felt like I wasn't supposed to be there
B: Children. You keep them safe. You make good for me.
MITCH ALBOM
THE FIVE PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HEAVEN
No comments:
Post a Comment