Thought For The Week 14

  • Thought For The Week 14 – What’s your life worth? Part 2

    God and circumstance has placed me at B&N a lot lately. It was there that I found my answer. Now to say I was looking for an answer; at least, my conscious mind wasn’t, but my heart was.

    The first thing I noticed, when meandering on a break from the laptop and my son; was that one of my favorite writers had written two new books since I had last checked. Paulo Coelho is one of my favorite authors. His books tend to be about journeys of one sort or another, and the human and many times, spiritual condition.

    This guy’s books are the sort that I’ve picked up in B&N, sat down and spent the day there reading in its entirety; and then purchased, because I liked the book so much. I’ve had time periods of distress or some trauma or issue that I was going through. Somehow, I would happen upon a new book of his. I’d read it and find a parallel of some sort that the main character was having in the midst of their journey, and find my answer within theirs.

    I immediately went downstairs and purchased the two books without a second thought. I had waited years for something new from him. As I was returning upstairs, I wandered around the opposite side of the second floor. Two other books caught my eye, and I picked them up and took them back to my seat, intent on just looking but not purchasing them.

    One is a book called monster, which I started to read. The story itself is nothing new. Some 16 year old teenager got himself “caught up in the game,” and ends up in jail and on trial for murder. It’s not the story line that interests me, but the delivery of it. So needless to say, I ended up purchasing this book, and the other one I’d picked up as well.

    The other one. I had started it at B&N, and was immediately hooked on the very first paragraph. I couldn’t believe that the very first paragraph held a line that I had already written in the book I had been working on last year. So naturally, I was interested.

    This is a book by the same author that wrote “Tuesdays With Morrie.” It’s called “The Five People You Meet In Heaven.” What a fantastic book. I had never read Tuesdays With Morrie, although I had previewed it and thought it looked interesting. I had even heard about the movie. I just didn’t have the time then.

    But this book…what a prize it is! It opens with the last hour of a man’s life. It’s bad to say or even think this, but I actually couldn’t wait until he died, because I was anxious to see the perception this writer was going to deliver on the afterlife. I gotta tell you, I spent the day reading it, and suffering from serious stuffy sinusitis due to all the crying I did.

    It’s funny how God gives us a precept, concept or idea; a new view and perspective; a new way of looking at our circumstance. Then He turns around and confirms it in a most unexpected place or way, or via the last person you’d expect to have that knowledge.

    I had already received my answer, but didn’t realize it. I spoke it out myself, in an explanation I had given to my son about life.
    Five Principles I learned from the book, my son and myself about life in no particular order:

    1. No story sits by itself. Sometimes stories meet at corners and sometimes they cover one another completely, like stones beneath a river. Take one story viewed from two different angles…

    I had been in the midst of attempting to impress upon my son, the importance of school and doing all of his assignments; regardless of whether he liked them, was interested, bored or not. In the course of my explanation, I brought up a subject that he, himself had taught me, at age seven: string theory. He’d learned it studying a science program on pbs, (Nova I think) and in one sitting, fully comprehended the theory and explained it to me…as a 7 year old child. Needless to say, at the time I was blown away at the brilliance of my child.

    So I began to revisit this string theory he had explained. He reminded me that one string had a number of atoms and that these strings were all around us; floating bands of atoms that were the content of our environment and the space around us.

    I grabbed a string and pulled it straight. “Let’s say that this string represents just one of the strings of atoms, and let’s say that this string represents your path in life. On this side of the string,” I said, nodding my head to indicate the end in my left hand, “is where you are now. And there are a number of atoms between there and here.” I nodded to indicate the end in my right hand.

    “Now there’s all these atoms in the middle from one side to the other, and let’s say that these represent the steps you need to take; the levels you need to achieve to get from this level here,” I nodded again to my left hand, “to this level here.” I raised my right hand. “This level here,” I motioned to my right hand, “represents your goals. For instance, you want to do something in the field of science and engineering. You’re interested in electricity. This end represents the level/atom you will be at when you reach that goal.”