The Five People You Meet in Heaven
By Mitch Albom
This is a story that starts with an end. A man named Eddie dies in an accident and goes to heaven. However he is not at rest. He is visited by five people that one way or another affected him in his life. He then finds out why the things that happened did and the deeper meaning behind them. He learns to look at situations at a different angle, the point of sacrifice, learning to listen, to understand and to forgive, lastly, he learned that true love never dies and life always has a deeper meaning behind it. Some of these people are strangers that have never met him before, others have known him through thick and thin, but in some way they effected him weather he realizes it or not. He may not be able to go back, but he can still help others learn the same lessons he did. But most of all he learned the importance of his life and how he effected many people without even knowing it. This story is here since it informs the reader of the events that change them and the people that effect them. It teaches the reader the same lessons Eddie learned and gives them a new perspective on the world.
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Quotes
...the running boy is inside every man, no matter how old he gets.
You may not have known the reason at the time, and that is what heaven is for. For understanding your life on earth.
"Fairness," he said, "does not govern life and death. If it did, no good person would ever die young"
Young men go to war. Sometimes because they have to, sometimes because they want to. Always, they feel they are supposed to. This comes from the sad, layered stories of life, which over the centuries have seen courage confused with picking up arms, and cowardice confused with laying them down.
Sacrifice is a part of life. It's supposed to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to aspire to. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices. A mother works so her son can go to school. A daughter moves home to take care of her sick father.
Sometimes 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.
Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them—a mother's approval, a father's nod—are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.
People don't die because of loyalty. "They don't?" She smiled. "Religion? Government? Are we not loyal to such things, sometimes to the death?"
Silence was his escape, but silence is rarely a refuge. His thoughts still haunted him.
Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside.
"Life has to end, Love doesn't."
You can't give away your birthday
...each affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.