Our Actions and the Not-So-Evident Effects

     “That there are no random acts. That we are all connected. That you can no more separate
one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind.” This quote from Mitch
Albom’s The Five People You Meet in Heaven sums up the underlying theme of the life of
Eddie. What I gathered from the book is that life is one big interconnected game of cause and
effect through the lives of billions of people. There is no action taken that goes without
consequences, whether they are positive or negative.
     Let’s say you decide on a generous impulse to give a homeless man ten dollars on your
way home. You continue your daily routine without giving the exchange a second thought.
For the homeless man, however, you have given him just enough money to buy clothes for an
interview that will result in him getting a job, forever altering the course of his life. You are
completely oblivious of the repercussions of your actions, just like Eddie was for the entire
duration of his life. Eddie’s running out into the street indirectly killed the blue man. His mental
and emotional instability during the war led him to set the hut on fire, killing Tala. His Captain
then has to shoot him in the leg to pull him out of his daze when Eddie thinks he sees someone in
the fire. This led the Captain to accidentally step on a land mine, which he may have seen had he
been focused on his own safety rather than everyone else’s.
     Every action you take either indirectly or directly affects the course of someone else’s
life. Mitch Albom sends a very clear message through the story of Eddie’s life, and that is
there are no coincidences, nothing happens by chance, and you cannot live your life without
overlapping someone else’s. Everything that anyone will ever do or say has already been
determined and planned out by an omnipotent force. In the grand scheme of life, you will inevitably affect someone by the actions you take, or a lack thereof.