post promos, pre results/OP/PW WR post

I believe that sometimes when we are feeling stressed or pissed at the whole damn world or are just feeling plain cynical and negative you need to read books like this:


to feel inspired and to realise that most of the time when you are feeling seriously screwed or unhappy or whatever it's all in your head.

i was about to provide a short summary of the book here, but because i'm such a lazy bugger i'm just going to copy and paraphrase the summary here:

1. Fate and Destiny
All lives intersect. Death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed. Life is always balanced. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole.
Strangers are just family you have yet come to know.
No life is a waste. The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone.

2. Sacrifice
Sacrifice is part of life and not something to regret or avoid. It's something to aspire to. Every sacrifice matters, even if you are wondering whether it was worth it or whether it benefitted someone. Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it but just passing it on to someone else.

3. Anger and forgiveness
Hatred is something we think that will hurt others but will only eat us up inside like poison. No one is born with anger. You need to forgive and forget in order to understand your life better.

4. Love
Lost love is still love. Life has to end. Love doesn't. We just keep it as eternal memories.

5. Purpose and Aim
You are where you are for a purpose. You are supposed to be where you are, your existence is to do what you are supposed do. We all have our purpose in life, the difference is that some of us just are able to see our ultimate purpose better than others.


Now, we all have our different intepretations of heaven. The Pearly Gates, the twisted version of heaven that all suicide bombers have been brainwashed to accept, the many religious incantations of heaven, the paradise where it is just a place to relax all day long, whatever. However, while I admit that i may be a cynical free-thinker who believes there (controversy alert) is no afterlife, no heaven, no hell, no whatever, it is nice to read one's interpretation of the afterlife and heaven as some sort of Memoria.

Sometimes we do need to gain 'some sort' of understanding into our lives, in order to gain 'some sort' of inner peace, so that we need not live through our lives wasting time wondering "Why?" but use it to do 'some sort' of greater good. I accept that the whole story is fiction, and we may never gain such an opportunity to finally solve all our questions once and for all (unless you have the time and the possession of a photographic memory, go ahead). It may be painful to remember painful memories which you may have once swore to forget once and for all, but reliving them like in the book allows one to be truly at peace with oneself.

But it really soothes one's mind and thoughts after reading this book =)

erjian came, saw, blogged