Life > September 22, 2006

By Dawson Cooper

Contributing Writer

Do you ever wonder if what you say or do has any effect on people?  Is anybody benefiting from your existence?  When you’re gone, will people miss you?  We all have these questions running through our minds and often take action to assure ourselves that our lives are indeed meaningful to others.

Author Mitch Albom responds to this notion of our personal effect on the people around us in his book, The Five People You Meet in Heaven.  “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 […] people who felt unimportant here on earth-realize, finally, how much they mattered and how they were loved” he explains.

Albom uses Eddie, a gruff man of eighty-three, to illustrate how actions both big and small affect others.  Eddie has worked in maintenance at Ruby Pier, an amusement park, since he was a young man. Performing systematic safety checks on the rides comprised his daily life. 

When a young girl’s life is endangered on a new ride, Freddy’s Free Fall, Eddie attempts to save her.  He loses his (seemingly mundane) life reaching out for the young girl’s hands to pull her to safety. 

When Eddie awakens he is in some sort of afterlife.  The only thing he can think about is whether or not the little girl’s life was saved.  As he meets five people in heaven, he continually questions them about the fate of the girl.  However, his five people answer many more questions about his entire life.

As Eddie progresses through the afterlife, or heaven, he views his life with clarity, assisted by the five people who were waiting for him.  They show him that while his life might have seemed meaningless and lonely, he affected people to whom he did not give a second thought. 

While this journey through his past is betimes pleasurable and enjoyable, there are times when Eddie must face difficult realities of some of the actions he took.  However, Eddie gets through the tough moments with a greater understanding of not only his life, but the lives of others who endured the same situation.

This book offers the reader a chance to reflect on his life.  Albom presents the reader with a perspective that we might be aware of, but often overlook.  Our actions affect others in ways that we may not realize at the time.  How many fellow students do we pass on the Quad without a simple smile, or good morning.  Might a simple action such as this affect their life? 

Albom, also the author of Tuesdays with Morrie, reassures us that no matter how unimportant you might feel, at some point in your life you have influenced somebody.  He offers a message that we can all relate to and should consider seriously.

In the opening chapter of the book, entitled “the End”, Albom gives us an insightful line: “all endings are also beginnings.  We just don’t know it at the time.”  Perceptions of our actions as ending with us are false.  Our actions are instead a beginning. They are the start of discovering our meaning and place in life as we yearn to be of importance or value in our world, just as Eddie did.