To LIFE!

One of the reasons I love reading Paulo Coelho is because he never disappoints! There is always a refreshing ending to his stories – you learn something new and feel rejuvenated. Victoria Decides to Die sounds morbid and it is – a young woman in her twenties trying to commit suicide because she is fed up with the way of the world. She decides she knows everything that is going to happen with her life, it doesn’t hold any novelty or excitement for her. The daily drone of the alarm going off at 6am, brushing your teeth, going to work, coming back from work, eating dinner, making love and falling asleep is a routine we are all familiar with. And time and again we ponder over how robotic our lives have become. We end up doing things because society expects us to do so not because it comes from the heart. The zeal to be different, innovative and creative that most of us held when we were younger, in school; when there was a real desire to change the world, to do something novel or that which mattered is somewhere lost.

And she feels the same way. So she decides to end her monotonous existence.

But then something changes – in the mental hospital where she is committed to spend the end of her days, she discovers living. She finds out life isn’t what everyone tells us what it is. Life is what we make of it. We can do what our families, friends, spouses, children and everyone else expects us to do or we can dare to be different. Yes, we risk losing the love of those we care about but then do they really love us or they love a mental picture they have created of us? Isn’t such a love questionable that erodes when it doesn’t fit in the mold they have for us? Is such a love necessary for us to not live our life and spend our days in fear and frustration?

With the help of 3 “mentally ill" people at the asylum, Veronika unaware of her new desires starts to lose her inhibitions and learns that each day is a blessing, each day new. The only problem is she has only 6 days to live. Now, she doesn’t want to die but fate has different plans for her. So what happens? Well, I am not going to divulge that but you will find out if you care to read.

Not a lot of people know but when Coelho was young, his parents had admitted him to an asylum 3 times because he didn’t fit their definition of normal. They wanted him to have a career as an executive but he could care less. Finally, after running around and escaping life for 38 years, Coelho discovered his true purpose was to be a writer and since then he has never looked back. To be able to follow his dream, he had to suffer obstacles, the wrath of a lot of people but that didn’t faze him. He continued on and today is one of the most beloved authors in the world. Indeed, a remarkable story!

Don’t know about anyone else but I needed to read this story. Sometimes in the daily drag of life, I forget to live. I am breathing but my mind forgets that I am alive. I am too bound in coming to work and going home and making dinner and washing the dishes to see that everything around me is sensational. That I am sensational to be alive and living this beautiful experience called life. This story reminded me of that and for that alone I am grateful.