Last week a fellow Pit Talker suggested that I blog about the books that I read. You see, I am a bibliophile. It sounds worrisome, I know, but it truly isn’t. I am a lover of books, a bookworm.
In fact, I carry a novel with me nearly everywhere I go. I have even been known to ride the elliptical machines in the gym with my nose in a book (balance training?), and I’m working on a contraption that will attach (and hold open) a novel to the display of the rowing machines, as they are my personal favorite.
I recently finished The Five People You Meet in Heaven, by Mitch Albom, which I casually read over the course of four or five days. I picked it up off the staff recommended shelf at Edward McCay, in Winston-Salem. I was surprisingly disappointed, and this is why.
In the opening dedication Albom writes
“Everyone has an idea of heaven, as do most religions, and they should all be respected. The version represented here is only a guess, a wish, in some ways, that my uncle, and others like him-people who felt unimportant here on earth-realize, finally, how much they mattered and how they were loved.”
I believe that in the short novel’s 196 pages he indeed fulfills this wish. Albom tenderly preaches the importance of every soul to enter and exit our world, guiding the reader through the afterlife of elderly Eddie, the Ruby Pier maintenance man. In summary, after his death Eddie meets five people (I know, shocker), each sharing a valuable lesson and helping him to understand his life on earth. Eddie finds self-worth, closure and eternal peace.
Sweet, right? The Five People You Meet in Heaven will make you feel warm and fuzzy inside. It might be a comfort to those who feel insignificant, trapped, boring or helpless. At the least, it will probably make you think both about the importance of others in your life and your own importance in theirs. But this book was an instant number one New York Times bestseller. Shouldn’t it do more?
Not necessarily. This work reflects two major beliefs of today’s culture, and American’s love to be fed with feel-good entertainment:
1. Lasting peace comes from understanding. Today’s culture screams, “INTELLECT!” at the top of it’s lungs every day. For instance, the culture frowns upon religious beliefs based on faith rather than reason. Every day we seek to understand, not accept. This might be academic, or it might be personal. We hate not knowing WHY something had to happen in a relationship, to a friend, to a family member, to a nation. In the novel, heaven is all about achieving this understanding that you might spend eternity in peace.
2. It’s all about you. The advertising industry feasts off of this belief. In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, heaven is all about you, too. It isn’t about God or even unity. After his death, Eddie met five people who had been waiting for him. Those five people helped him to understand his own life, his own importance. And when that was said and done, he proceeded to spend eternity in any setting of his choosing.
In short, I liked it just fine. It was an easy read, lightweight, original and positive. But I don’t miss Eddie like I miss the characters from Bel Canto. I read a few pages each night then set it aside without any anxiety.
Most importantly, when I clapped it closed and set it on my desk I thought to myself, “That was profoundly insignificant.”
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