Mitch Albom has written quite an interesting, sleepy little book about his take on heaven. While Mitch attempts to address what he expects heaven to be about, I found that it wasn’t very theologically correct. His account of heaven centered around the main character, Eddie, a “good man.” There were only a very few vague mentions of God. Theologically speaking, heaven is going to be centered around God.
Nevertheless, the book was a fun read and offered some great insights. The story essentially was about a hard-working man who lived a mediocre life. Not unlike anyone of us. He dies a tragic death and finds himself in heaven. Heaven, according to Albom is a meeting place in which one ends up meeting five people to shed a light on one’s life on earth. This helps the hard-worker to bring perspective to the way all people are connected in life. In Albom’s own words, “people think of heaven as a paradise garden, a place where they can float on clouds and laze in rivers and mountains. But scenery without solace is meaningless. 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.” Each person that he meets teaches him a different life lesson.
The lessons are real-life lessons we each should all learn to live by. They are moral. The first lesson is “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.” We are all interconnected.
The second lesson is sacrifice. “Sacrifice is 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.”
The third lesson is forgiveness. The protagonist in the book, Eddie, had a rough relationship with his dad growing up. The section begins with “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 pieces, beyond repair.”
The fourth lesson is love. Eddie’s late wife is the one who shares this with him. “Lost love is still love, Eddie. 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 has to end...Love doesn’t.”
The last lesson was the fulfillment of his life. An understanding that his life really did have a meaning, despite the mediocrity.
The thing is, each of these “lessons” do us no good once we’re dead. This is where I thank Albom for writing the story. He does an excellent job at creating a character that all men can identify with. A man who used to dream of being someone larger than he wound up being. At least in his own eyes. But in reality, he really was an important person. His life was intimately connected with so many others. He just couldn’t see it because in his mind, he wasn’t who he dreamed he could be.
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