Hmm..It's been a while since my last post. Been busy with work and personal issues. So, Happiness. It chooses no one. It's our choice. There are a lot of people who whine, I do sometimes, about life. How they wish that they have this and that. How they wish they richer than other, how they were prettier or handsomer. This is not possible. We choose our destiny, we choose to be happy. God give us what we have and its up to be contented. Of course, we have dreams of becoming more but it all boils down to us, to be contented.
I was reading The Book Thief last week and it made me re-think about my life. How blessed and lucky I am.
The Book Thief takes place in Germany before and during World War II. The story is told from the point of view of Death who finds the story of the Book Thief, Liesel Meminger, to be very interesting, as she brushes Death three times in her life. The novel begins when Liesel's mother takes Liesel and her brother Werner to live with foster parents Hans and Rosa Hubermann in Molching, as she can not provide for them. Werner dies during the journey, and at his graveside funeral, Liesel stealsThe Grave Digger's Handbook, fallen in the snow after a gravedigger drops it. Though illiterate, Liesel knows that books are precious. Liesel's foster parents, the Hubermanns, treat her well. The stern Rosa often insults Liesel by calling her a "dirty pig" (saumensch in German), but we learn that this is Rosa's prickly way of showing affection. The gentler Hans teaches Liesel how to read The Gravedigger's Handbook. This begins her love for reading and words, as well as keeping the memory of her brother close to her. Liesel also befriends the other children of Himmel Street, including Rudy Steiner, who is in love with her and is also her best friend. She continues stealing books from various sources, but mainly the library of Ilsa Hermann, the mayor's wife. She also steals once from a Nazi book burning. Her foster family helps a Jewish man named Max Vandenburg, whose father saved Hans' life during World War I. Liesel begins to write her own book, The Book Thief, as the story of her life. When Himmel Street is bombed, she is the only survivor, as she was writing in the Hubermanns' basement at the time. She finds the body of Rudy, then her foster parents. This is Death's second encounter with Liesel. Distraught, she drops the book, which Death finds and keeps. She goes to live with the Hermanns (the mayor and his wife) and when Alex Steiner (Rudy's father, drafted into war) returns, she works in his tailor shop. In 1945, Max Vandenburg walks into the shop, and he and Liesel are reunited. At the end of the book, Death tells us that she dies in Sydney, Australia, along with revealing a few other details of her life. He returns her book, along with a truth he can not tell anyone else: "I am haunted by humans." This is his third and final encounter with her.
I'm so touched by Leisel naivete, her relationship with her foster parents and her friendship with Rudy. If I were in her place, I would have given up.
Reading the book made me appreciate my blessings more. Being contented is hard. People by nature always want more. For me, being contented means being happy with what you have, appreciating what has been given to you and accepting your fate. It's difficult. But if you are contented you can be happy. so let me leave you with these quotes:
“I've learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or
misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances.”- Martha Washington
We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have. ~Frederick Keonig
