Warm love breeds the meaning of life--- "Five People You Meet in Heaven"

"The Five You Met in Paradise" is one of the masterpieces of the famous American writer Mitch Albom. After its publication in September 2003, it swept the first place in the new york times, publishers weekly and other major best-seller lists, and sold 8 million copies, which is a classic in the hearts of thousands of readers.

Mitch Albom's works, always facing life and death, have a strong philosophical meaning, from the early autobiographical documentary work "Meet Tuesday", to this "Five People You Meet in Heaven", and later "One Day Again", all of which explore human nature and redemption, bringing readers different inspirations.

"The Five People You Meet in Heaven" is a fantasy story that tells the inseparable connection between people and people, and it is both a novel and a modern fable. It begins with death, but mourns without hurting, and perfectly blends the strangeness of the story with the intriguing philosophy of life. I believe that after we read this book, we will definitely be touched, and maybe it will change our lives in some ways.

We often say that everyone you meet in life has a reason. It's just that at that time, you may not be aware of it, and often have to go through twists and turns until the opportunity is ripe, and you can have an epiphany.

If some things could be known earlier, would our lives be less regretful? The answer is yes. This is also one of the messages that today's book wants to convey.

The story begins with the ending: one day, in a playground called "Ruby Dock" on the edge of the sea, a amusement car broke its cable and sped down from the sky. There was a little girl sitting below, and at the moment of life and death, Eddie, an 83-year-old lame maintenance worker at the playground, pounced on it. He only felt two small hands in his hands, and then the world was empty.

When Eddie woke up, he found himself surrounded by silence. His disabled legs from his early years as a soldier ached, and the exhaustion he had accumulated over the years had all disappeared.

Where is this? Is that little girl okay? Did I get her out? Eddie thought. He looked around and found himself back in his childhood at Ruby Dock. He saw a middle-aged man with blue skin, hunched over his shoulders. It was the first man he met in heaven--- Joseph the Blue-Skinned Man.

This is a man that Eddie has almost forgotten. On a rainy morning when he was seven years old, when he and his friends were playing baseball, the ball hit the street, and Eddie rushed out to pick it up. A car braked sharply past him, and the driver was Joseph. Because of this sudden event, his adrenaline rushed, and Joseph died of a heart attack.

Eddie, who knew the origin of the incident, did not know what to do in shock. Joseph laughed and told him that the five men he had met in heaven were not asking him to repent of his sins, but to teach him some truth.

Joseph said to Eddie, "There are no accidental acts in the world, people are connected. You cannot completely separate one life from another, just as the wind and the breeze are always closely linked. Fairness does not govern life and death. Although I die because of you, there will be people who die because of me. This kind of thing happens every day. The plane you might have been on crashed, your colleague was sick and you didn't, we think these things are accidental, in fact, everything has a certain balance. A wither, a growth, birth and death, are all part of the whole. I'm dead, but you're alive. ”

Eddie then returned to the battlefield in the Philippines and met the captain who had led his battle.

They were comrades in arms together in the army, and the captain was Eddie's commander, who was grumpy and always shouted loudly against the faces of his soldiers. However, he always promised that no matter what happened, no one would be left behind.

On that occasion on the Philippine battlefield, their squad was attacked by heavy fire and taken prisoner. Later, they finally seized the opportunity to escape. Before leaving, the angry soldiers were to burn down the place where they were imprisoned.

When Eddie burned the barn, he felt that there was a small figure inside. But the comrades saw nothing, and in order to stop him from running back to the burning barn, the captain shot and wounded Ai Bian's leg. On their way out of the fighting, the captain took the lead in exploring the way, but was blown up by a mine.

The captain said to Eddie, "I'm afraid you're going to die in that fire." At that time, you were enchanted to enter the barn, and no one could stop you. A soldier reaches his limit, has a nervous breakdown, and cannot go any further. I can't leave you behind. To injure your leg is to save your life. Later, they sent you to the medical team. ”

The captain said: "You are angry at the sacrifices you have made, and you are angry about what you have lost. Because you don't understand that self-sacrifice is actually part of life. I didn't die in vain, and if we had stepped on that mine together that night, all four of us would have been finished. Although I lost my life, I also got something, which was to keep my promise and not leave anyone behind. Therefore, self-sacrifice is worth pursuing, and there is no need to feel sorry. Now, can you forgive me for ruining your leg? ”

Eddie listened in silence, ashamed of his resentment. He held out his hand, and the captain held him tightly.

In heaven, the third person Eddie meets is his father. He saw his father eating in a dining car restaurant, and he frantically knocked on the glass window, desperately trying to shout out the words he hadn't shouted out in decades: Dad! father! father! The man did not react

Eddie's father worked as a lifelong repairman at Ruby Docks. Not only did he not give Eddie the care he deserved, but he punished him with sticks and slaps at every turn. However, Eddie still silently worships his father and always wants to win his father's approval.

After junior high school, Eddie also went to the playground to help, and his father would test him for maintenance problems, and he always handed Eddie some broken parts and said, "Fix it." Every time the task was completed, Eddie returned the part to his father and said, "It's fixed." "This is a silent tacit understanding between father and son. When I got home from work, Eddie's nails, like those of his father, were greasy. It always pleased my father.

But after Eddie returned from the battlefield, he stayed at home all day and became reticent. His father could not understand Eddie's depression and asked him to get up and find a job to do. During an argument, Eddie grabbed his father's arm that was waving at him and yelled, "Enough! "It was the first time he had rebelled against his father. After that night, my father never spoke to Eddie again until his death.

At this moment, even though he has reached heaven, Eddie finds that he still longs for his father's love. And his father's disregard once again stung his heart.

At this moment, an old woman appeared in front of Eddie. She said she was the original owner of Ruby Pier to tell Eddie how his father died. Because his father's soul was not here, he could neither see nor hear Eddie.

One rainy night, Eddie's father's friend Mickey came to his father for help. He had just lost his job, felt lonely and desperate, and was drunk. When her mother was changing clothes in the bedroom and preparing to take Mickey to find her father, Mickey broke in. His father, who had just returned, chased Mickey to the seashore and found him falling into the sea.

The kind father knew that Mitchie had only made a mistake on impulse, and he jumped into the sea to save him. But he suffered from a cold, turned into pneumonia, and died.

The old woman said, "Your father was very harsh on you. However, you are also very harsh on him. On his last night in the hospital, when none of you were around, he climbed up to the window in the middle of the night and shouted in a faint voice your mother's name, your name, and Mickey's name, and he seemed to feel the light of death coming, full of remorse and guilt, to confide in you. It was too cold at night, and his body could not resist the cold wind and humidity, and he died before dawn. ”

The old woman said to Eddie again, "I'll teach you a truth. Anger is poison that eats us from the heart. We think that hatred is a weapon that can be used against those who hurt us, but in fact, hatred is a double-edged sword, hurting others while also hurting ourselves. In order to move forward, you have to learn to forgive. ”

Eddie arrives in a strange courtyard and meets the fourth man he is meeting in heaven--- his dear wife Margaret.

They met the night before Eddie's 17th birthday, and the two fell in love at first sight. After Eddie returned from the army, the two ended their marriage after a simple ceremony on the dim second floor of a Chinese restaurant.

Life after marriage is peaceful, everyone's experience of love is different, for Eddie, the love between him and Margaret is deep and wordless, it is a grateful relationship, and no one can replace it. So, after Margaret's death, his heart fell into a deep sleep.

Margaret was unable to have children, and the two once wanted to adopt a child. But one of Eddie's horse bets caused Margaret, who had gone to him because she was uneasy, to get into a car accident and lie in the hospital for six months.

Expensive medical bills and delays put the two's plans to adopt a child in vain. The wordless rebuke is like a lingering shadow, separated from them.

Fortunately, the years have slowly healed the wounds, and the dependence on each other has allowed the two to return to their previous love. Margaret was in her forties, but in Eddie's eyes, no young girl was as beautiful as his wife.

But only three years after a happy life, Margaret was diagnosed with a brain tumor and left at the age of 47. Just before dawn that day, Eddie drove Margaret to the hospital. She lifted her eyes and looked at the distant horizon, where a white Ferris wheel towered. Margaret said, "You can see --- home from here. ”

At this moment, in heaven, Margaret asked Eddie, "After I've been gone for so many years, you've lived a life without love, haven't you?" ”

Eddie didn't say a word. Margaret added, "You feel that your love has been deprived, that I left you prematurely." ”

Eddie said, "You're the nicest person I've ever met. You died, I lost everything, the only woman I ever loved. ”

Margaretla took Eddie's hand and said, "Lost love is still love, but in a different form." You can no longer see their smiles or chat with them, but when these feelings weaken, another feeling, memory, is sublimating. The memory becomes your partner, you nurture it, you dance with it. Eddie, life will have an end, but love won't. I'm right here, and you've never lost me. ”

No matter how much Eddie didn't give up, Margaret disappeared. Eddie welcomed the fifth person he was going to meet in heaven--- a little girl named Tara.

This is also a person who Eddie has no impression on. But Tara tells Eddie that she was the child who was set on fire by Eddie in a barn while in the Philippines.

Eddie shivered and stared into the little girl's dark eyes. The little girl gave him a smile back, which made Eddie completely broken. He buried his face in his palms, his shoulders twitching, and he began to cry. It turned out that the nightmare that had haunted him all his life was real, that the shadow in the fire was not an illusion, and that he had burned this lovely child to death. He cried until he was exhausted, knelt before the little girl, and kept repenting, begging for her forgiveness. In fact, Tara's smiling look at him already said it all.

Tara tells Eddie that he didn't get nothing done as a repairman at the Ruby Wharf playground, he should be there, keep the kids safe, and he's done a lot of good things.

Eddie asked Tara if he had rescued the little girl from the playground. Tara says of course, and the little hands that Eddie felt in the last moments were Tara's, and she took him to heaven.

Eddie saw the Ruby Dock again, which was crowded with people, men, women, children, people from the past, people now. It is precisely because of Eddie's ordinary work in his life, because he has avoided countless possible accidents, so many people can laugh freely in the playground. Their voices filled every corner of the pier, but it made Eddie feel more peaceful than ever.

Eddie was floating in the air, and he saw the white Ferris wheel, in a swing seat, where his wife, Margaret, was smiling and opening her arms to him, and Eddie reached out to embrace her. At that moment, all the voices melted and condensed into one word that came from God: home.

That's the essence of American writer Mitch Albom's novel The Five You Met in Heaven. The reason why this work has achieved great success is that it cleverly contains its precious philosophy of life in a sincere story.

When Eddie doesn't believe that the ruby playground of his childhood is heaven, Joseph tells him that people tend to despise the place where they grew up, but heaven has multiple realms, and it can appear in the most inconspicuous corners.

In heaven, you will meet five people, each of whom appears in your life for a reason, but you may not have known it at the time. The meaning of heaven's existence is to make you understand everything that happens in life.

When Eddie understood his father and learned to forgive, he also understood: all parents hurt their children. The child is like a clean glass, and everyone who has taken it will leave a handprint on it. Some parents soiled the cup, and some parents broke the cup into pieces.

……

The five people Eddie meets in heaven reveal different philosophies of life, about love, responsibility, understanding, forgiveness, and human connection. None of these stories are isolated, and all life is interdependent, like pebbles at the bottom of a river, layered on top of each other. Finally, the author reveals the most important theme of the novel: everyone deserves to be loved and respected, and the life you think is meaningless is actually the value of your life.