Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Five lessons learned from the Five People You meet in Heaven

Getting back to school as a fulltime student gave me a chance to get hold of that precious time to start reading again. With all the busy schedules one has to endure just to keep at pace with work, I can't even bother to lift a book not related to the things I am teaching. The last time I finished some readings was way back in college and that was so long ago. And now I finally got the chance.

For this month I was able to finished two books (have to stop for about a week or two to finish some reports for school), though I have read each book in one sitting. Both were written by Mitch Albom, "Tuesdays with Morrie" and "The Five People you meet in Heaven". I have wanted to read Tuesdays with Morrie but as I have said, I was tied up to work.

For now I would like to share some lessons learned from the second book that I have read - The Five People you meet in Heaven. The story was about life, death and more importantly about relationships. But it was not just about relationships, quoting one of the texts "No life is a waste. The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone."

Lesson one - We are all connected

It's been said a hundred times that "No man is an Island". We may not know everyone but there is something that binds us all together. The things we do affects others directly or indirectly. I quote "the human spirits 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."

What we must do is to learn to connect with people. Appreciate people we don't know as much as the ones we do know. "Strangers are just family you have yet to come to know."

Lesson two - Sacrifice

Sacrifice I think is one of the hardest things to do. It is the one thing that usually engulfs us with fear, anxiety and regret. But "sacrifice is a part of life. It's supposed to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to aspire to."

Being able to sacrifice for the good of others is the greatest gift you could give even if it means losing your life to save another. "When you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else."

Lesson three - Learn to forgive

People always think that forgiving is an act of cowardliness that's why a lot of us have a hard time forgiving, including me. But learning to forgive is one courageous act. It is the anger that makes us not forgive. But "no one is born with anger. And when we die, the soul is freed of it." "Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside." It haunts you till your last breath. "Hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves." It is we that are affected by our anger, our hatred.

But if we learn to forgive and let go of those anger and hatred, we are not only at peace to the people we hated before but most specially to ourselves.

Lesson four - Remembering love

With love we can do anything and everything. Anyone that is in love will say that it is the happiest moment of their lives. But as one goes and leaves one behind, love mustn’t go as well. "Life has to end. Love doesn't." People left behind must continue to love and much more nourish love, for it is the one thing that could make us remember the people who have touched our hearts and our lives. "Lost love is still love. It takes a different form, that's all."

Lesson five - Acceptance

The last lesson I believe is vague and is for us to comprehend, but for me I think it is "acceptance". One must accept one's capabilities and limitations, the realities of life. For by learning to accept, one will not have feelings of envy, anger, or hatred. One will be at peace.

"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."

Looking back at the things you failed to do and not learning to accept that we no longer have the capacity to do or undo so will leave us in conflict with our selves. Getting angry at the thoughts will imprison us in that moment. Denying us the capacity to move on and do well.

NOTE: Text in Italics are quoted from "The Five People You meet in Heaven".

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