The Five Lessons from Mitch Albom's "The Five People You Meet in Heaven"

Though some pages moved me to tears, I’d still say I had a very pleasant experience of reading Mitch Albom’s “The Five People You Meet In Heaven”. It has given me a different idea of the afterlife, a VERY DIFFERENT kind of heaven, and the wisdom of giving value to life and the people in our lives -- loved ones or strangers.

I just want to highlight The Five Lessons, each one told by each of the Five people -- because it has comforted me, as I sorely miss my mom, each waking day since January 29, 2009...

1. The human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That Death doesn’t just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed.
2. Dying is not the end of everything. What happens on earth is only the beginning. Heaven is where we get to make sense of our yesterdays. Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you’re not really losing it. You’re just passing it on to someone else.
3. There will be a feeling of “lightness” when we arrive in heaven. There will never be pain. No one is born with anger. And when we die, the soul will be freed from it. To move on, we need to forgive.
4. Lost love is still love. It takes a different form. 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. But love doesn’t.
5. Someday, it may be in heaven, when our questions would finally be answered. Why we lived and what we lived for. The secret of heaven is this : that each affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.