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Wednesday, December 08, 2004 ; 6:01 PM
The five people you meet in heaven. great book. i was looking through it again and again.. quoted this whole chapter. it's inspirational and touching, really.
(eddie goes to heaven and meets his first person, the blue man.)
"Take a rainy sunday morning in july, in the late 1920s, on eddie's 7th birthday. take a moment when eddie's playing baseball and that ball flies over Eddie's head and out into the street. eddie, wearing tawny pants and a wool cap, chases after it, and runs in front of an automobile, a ford model A. the car screeches, veers, and just misses him. he shivers, exhales, gets the ball, and races back to his friends. the game soon ends and the children run to the arcade to play the erie digger machine, with its claw-like mechanism that picks up small toys.
now take that same story from a different angle. a man is behind the wheel of ford model A, which he has borrowed from a friend to practise his driving. the road is wet from the morning rain. suddenly, a baseball bounces across the street, and a boy comes racing after it. the driver slams on the brakes and yanks the wheel. the car skids, the tires screech.
the man somehow regains control, and the model A rolls on. the child has disappeared in the rearview mirror, but the man's body is still affected, thinking of how close he came to tragedy. the jolt of adrenaline has forced his heart to pump furiously and this heart is not a strong one and the pumping leaves him drained. the man feels dizzy and his head drops momentarily. his automobile nearly collides with another. the second driverhonks, the man veers again, spinning the wheel, pushing on the brake pedal. he skids along an avenue then turns down an alley. the impact smacks the man into the steering wheel. his forehead bleeds. he steps from the model A, sees the damage, then collapses onto the wet pavement. it is sunday morning, he alley is empty. he remains there, unnoticed, slumped against the side of the car.
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. (the one who died in the car accident was the blue man.)
"please mister.." eddie pleaded. "i didn't know. believe me.. God help me, i didn't know."
the blue man nodded. "you couldn't know, you were too young."
eddie stepped back. he squared his body as if bracing for a fight.
"but now i gotta pay," he said.
"to pay?"
"for my sin. that's why i'm here, right? justice?"
the blue man smiled. "no, edward. you are here so i can teach you something. all the people you meet here have one thing to teach you."
eddie was skeptical. his fists stayed clenched.
"what?" he said.
"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."
eddie shook his head. "we were throwing a
ball. it was my stupidity, running out there like that. why should
you have to die on account for me? it ain't fair."
the blue man held out his hand. "
fairness," he said, "
does not govern life and death. if it did, no good person would ever die young."
"my funeral," the blue man said. "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."
"you say you should have died instead of me. but during my time on earth, people die 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 you 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."
"i still don't understand.." eddie whispered. "what good came from your death?"
"you lived," the blue man answered.
"but we barely know each other. i might as well have been a stranger."
the blue man put his arms on eddie's shoulders. "
strangers," the blue man said, "
are just family you have yet to come to know."
"
no life is a waste," the blue man said. "
the only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone."
which is just so true. i just felt really inspired after reading that chapter.. now i know i shouldn't waste my time thinking i'm alone. :) alright my hand's aching after all the typing.
xoxo -
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