The Five People You Meet in Heaven

I've read Mitch Albom's "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" when I was still in college. I liked the book. However, when I watched the film adaptation, I realized that I've forgotten most of the parts. Watching the film felt like I was rereading the book.

The story follows the life of Eddie, a war veteran who worked as a maintenance man in an amusement park. The story started strangely, with Eddie dying. Albom explained this by saying, "It might seem strange to start a story with an ending. But all endings are beginnings. We just don't know it at the time..."

Eddie was trying to save a little girl about to get crushed by a part of a broken amusement ride. On earth, Eddie was grumpy, a manifestation of his unsatisfactory life. He felt trapped in the amusement park where his father also worked his whole life. When Eddie was younger, he badly wanted to leave the place. But as fate would have it, the constant nightmares of war never departed him, plus his broken leg, another war remnant, hindered him.

“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. 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.”

In heaven, there were five people separately waiting for Eddie's arrival. Each of them had a life lesson to impart. These five people were meant to help Eddie understand and appreciate his life.

“Death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed.” 

The first person Eddie met was the Blue Man. A man whose life ended when Eddie was a child. The Blue Man died because while he was driving, Eddie came running after a baseball. In an attempt to avoid hitting Eddie, the Blue Man swerved his car and succeeded. His weak heart, however, wasn't able to contain the surprise and the adrenalin rush.

Eddie indirectly caused the Blue Man's death.

This part of the story intrigued me. It highlighted how our actions have consequences that we are unaware of most of the time. An act that you thought was random might have cost someone's life or have substantially changed it. The message was clear: no act is random; everything we do, no matter how insignificant it may seem, leaves an imprint in the world.

The Blue Man shared to Eddie that no life is a waste because good things may result from bad events. Although the Blue Man died, his death allowed Eddie to live. His energy remained a part of every impact that Eddie left in his lifetime. That lives are interconnected and every man's action has a way of affecting other lives are recurring themes of the story.

“Sacrifice," the captain said. "You made one. I made one. We all made 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.”

The second person that Eddie met in heaven was his captain in the military. Eddie wasn't aware that his captain died during the war. The captain accidentally stepped on a landmine while they were trying to escape the mine. Eddie was unconscious due to the bullet shot in his leg when it happened. Upon his recovery and release from the hospital, Eddie just left. He wanted to forget about what happened and didn't get in touch with the other war veterans.

The captain taught Eddie that sacrifice is a part of life and that the beauty of sacrifice is the act itself. As the captain said, "when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else.”

“All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.”

Eddie's third person in heaven was Ruby Pier, the woman whose name the amusement park where Eddie worked was named after. Eddie and Ruby never met on earth. But Ruby witnessed the last moments of Eddie's father in the hospital as her husband shared a room with Eddie's father.

The lesson that Ruby shared is my personal favorite. It was about forgiveness. She said that “Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that by hating someone we hurt them but hatred is a curved blade and the harm we do to others, we also do to ourselves.” She pointed out that Eddie was unsatisfied with his life not solely because of his father, but also because he was not at peace with himself. Eddie was mad at his father because of how he was treated when he was a child. He wanted attention and affection but his father had another way of expressing them, not the form that Eddie wanted. The hatred he felt for his father also made his heart heavy, hence, the unhappiness. Realizing this, Eddie freed himself from hatred and finally forgave his father for all the hurt he caused him.

Forgiveness doesn't come easy. It should be a conscious decision to let go of the hurt and accept the person who wronged us. Although forgiveness takes time, the ability to give it is a precious gift. When we forgive others, we free ourselves from the burden brought by grudges and allow love to lead our lives.  

“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.” 

Marguerite, the love of Eddie's life, his wife, was his fourth person in heaven. She died of a brain tumor. Eddie never completely accepted her death. Even after she died, Eddie loved no other woman but her.

Marguerite taught Eddie that love is eternal. Even if people dear to you died, you continuously love them. That kind of love is still love. In Marguerite's words, “Lost love is still love. 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."

Life might end but love doesn't.

“There are no random acts. We are all connected. You can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind.”

Tala, a Filipina child who was in a nipa hut that Eddie burned as a war prisoner escapee, was Eddie's fifth person. It happened in the Philippines during the Japanese occupation where Eddie and his allies were held as prisoners by the Japanese. 

Eddie had been consistently visited by nightmares of the burning nipa hut and the shadow that he saw inside it. He was never sure whether the shadow was real or imagined. Upon seeing Tala, his fear was confirmed -- there was, indeed, a person inside the hut, and he caused her death.

Despite this, Tala told Eddie that his life was significant because of the work he did as maintenance personnel at the amusement park. Eddie was surprised because it was the work he loathed and thought of as insignificant. But Tala emphasized that if not for Eddie, people and children could have died from the rides. Eddie, then, kept people's lives safe from danger.

Albom is trying to tell us that we are all significant, no matter how lowly we think of ourselves, our jobs, or our life. This also teaches us that a mistake we committed in the past doesn't make us a totally horrible person because we can compensate for them. For instance, Eddie made up for Tala's death by working at the amusement park. By being the maintenance worker, Eddie had atoned for Tala's death even though he was not conscious about it. "Children," she said. "You keep them safe. You make good for me."

-----

Albom may be wrong about his perception of heaven or he may be right. We will never know. What is important is not really what he thinks of heaven, but what his book mirrors.

YOU are Eddie. I am Eddie. We are all Eddie.

We go through our day-to-day lives thinking that we are not making any significant contribution to the world, that our life is such a waste, or that we wish to start our lives anew because we regret a lot of things. We all commit the mistake of thinking that there is a perfect life free from hurt, loss, and remorse. We end up wishing for that perfect life instead of trying to appreciate the imperfect life we have.

We should find meaning in every little thing we do, in every person we interact with, in every place we walk on. That way, we can truly LIVE LIFE. There is no need for us to wait until heaven calls us to meet five people just to understand our life's significance. We can do that right now. After all, we have control over our lives and we can make sense of our purpose.

All in all, I really loved the book, and the movie almost completely resembled the book. I would recommend it to those who enjoy soul-searching and contemplating about life. It's not for the average moviegoers looking for entertainment; they might find it dragging, boring even.

As for me, I'd love to watch the movie again because I want to be reminded of its rich life lessons. I'll let you in on the secret of heaven according to Albom, "Each (story) affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.” 

You have the power to affect and change someone's life even without being aware of it. Exercise cautiousness in the things you do. And remember: you can never go wrong when you spread love.

*Mitch Albom has a lot of priceless quotations that can change the way you look at life. You can read some of them here: http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2561472-the-five-people-you-meet-in-heaven?auto_login_attempted=true