People’s Opinion on the Influence of Connection Between Different Lives and the Attitude Towards Their Life

 People’s Opinion on the Influence of Connection between Different Lives

and the Attitude Towards Their Life

Qiwei Jiang

Writing 0002F

Professor Samuels

Qiwei Jiang

Professor Samuels

Writing 0002F

16 October 2015

When I was in high school, I once read a book which is so important to my life, because it totally changed my attitude about my self-value. The name of the book is The Five People You Meet in Heaven, which was written by Mitch Albom. The story is mainly about an old man named Eddie. Though he is seemingly always on the run, he accomplishes nothing in his life. In the beginning of the story, Eddie died in an accident in a brave attempt to save a little girl from being killed by an amusement park facility, and he was sent to heaven. In heaven, he meets five people who have more or less connection with his life. Through the conversation with these five people, Eddie knows the importance of sacrifice and forgiveness, and he also realizes no life is wasted because all individuals and experiences are connected in some way.

After I finished reading the book, questions flashed into my mind: How do people evaluate the influence of their life on others and the impacts of connections between people? There is a statement that “Life supposes an adaptation between the self, or the subject, and the outward conditions.” (Lang 6). This opinion shows life must have connection with the world. For me, I once hold the opinion that there are few things I care about. At that moment, I thought the earth can still exist without me, so nobody really cares about me. This attitude affected me a lot at that time. I often felt there’re no goals for me to chase and no passion for my life. What’s more, I became not confident, I was afraid of failure. I didn’t have enough courage to challenge obstacles. However, I found this kind of attitude was so negative after I read this book. Just like Mitch Albom’s view from the novel: “each affects the others and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.” (113). I firmly support his idea. My life has connections with others, more or less, and these connections might affect other people’s life, negative or positive. That is to say, everyone is important in our daily life, and no life is meaningless. After I changed my attitude about my self-value, my life has changed a lot. I don’t feel bored about my work anymore, because I do feel my working is useful to me. When I realized my working is of meaning, everything I do is to make a better me.

That is the influence on me from this book, but I also want to know do others feel the same after reading this novel? Do people agree with author’s view towards self-value? There are many people hold a clear understanding of the self-value.“There are different targets and destinations during different periods of our life.However, the final purpose is to develop one’s potential and creativity,   with the ultimate aim for the realization of self-value.”(Qiudu). A majority of people have the positive attitude towards their life, they know what they are chasing for, their objective is quite clear and they will try their best to make it come true. And during the process of chasing for their dreams, they are achieving self-worth.