Sunday afternoon I finished The Five People You Meet in Heaven, by Mitch Albom, which I have been casually reading over the last week. 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.”
and 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 our world, guiding the reader through the afterlife of elderly Eddie, the Ruby Pier maintenance man. (Fear not! In an effort not to spoil it for you I will refrain from disclosing details and stick to general reactions.) 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? Sure. Now, I personally feel that to enjoy a book, it must do one of three things (or better, a combination!).
1. Invite me in, sit me down for a cup of tea, offer me the guest room and after building a little trust, pour out it’s heart to me late at night over hot chocolate and brownies.
2. Make my mother angry when I’m home and she calls me to the dinner table 15 times before coming upstairs to find me chained to my bed, my eyes resembling Penocchio’s nose, frantically flying through each word, my pupils approximately four mm. from the page.
3. Leave me devoting precious brain power to fully contemplating it’s sheer enormity.
The Five People You Meet in Heaven did none of the above. 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 a number one New York Times bestseller. Shouldn’t it do more?
Not necessarily. This work reflects two major beliefs of today’s culture:
1. Lasting peace comes from understanding. Today’s culture screams, “INTELLECT, INTELLECT, INTELLECT!” at the top of it’s lungs every day. For instance, the culture frowns upon religious beliefs based on faith rather than reason. If something can’t be proven, it can’t be trusted. Every day we seek to understand. 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 is booming thanks to this belief. Over the holiday season, I heard at least 293,238,078,461 radio commercials for laser hair removal, and they all said the same thing. Even though it’s the season of giving, it’s essential that you do something for yourself; after all that giving, you deserve something extra special. And so on, and so forth. 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 clapped it closed and set it on my desk I thought to myself, “That was profoundly insignificant.”
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