I recently read, The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Album. I had heard great things about it, passed it in the bookstores many times, but never thought to read it for myself. My reading it was actually an accident. I just sat down at my coffee table at home where someone had left the book and read the entire thing. It was an eye opening experience, and I recommend that everyone read it.

Author, Amy Tan, simply put it: "This is the fable you will devour when you fall in love. This is the tale you will keep by you side when you are lost. This is the story you will turn to again and again, because it possesses the rare magic to let you see yourself and the world anew. This book is a gift to the soul."

I am not here to give a book review, however. What I really got out of this book was a different perspective on death. I like many others in this country, I believe in an afterlife. I have always believed that when we die, we either go to heaven or to hell.

Death is an almost taboo subject in our society. It is not something that people are open to talk about. Many of us fear death, possibly because it is the unfamiliar.

Cultural anthropologist, Ernest Becker, thought "the idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity-designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny of man."

Here's what I have to offer:

Lesson One: Every choice we make in life effects someone else in some way. We are all connected to each other. As one person leaves this world, another person is born into it.

Lesson Two: Death is not the end. Heaven is a place where we can reflect and understand the life we led on Earth.

Lesson Three: Forgiveness is crucial, not necessarily for the person being forgiven, but for your own benefit. Holding grudges and having hatred only make you bitter, angry at the world and miserable in the end.

Lesson Four: Love never ends. Love is eternal.

Lesson Five: You accomplish more in life than you know. You affect people's lives everyday, and don't even know it. You matter in the world.

So, just a few things to think about and I highly recommend reading this book.

Until next time, yours truly, Anastasia.

The article above was found on Google and was published originally on Frost Illustrated