Forever Linked

“Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.” These are the famous words of Leonardo di Vinci. Everyone’s lives are connected somehow whether we know it or not. The actions a person takes not only affect their life, but their actions affect others’ lives too, even if it is someone they have never met before. We influence someone every day whether it is good or bad, and this can change someone’s life forever. In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, the Blue Man states, “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.” Eddie’s actions in The Five People You Meet in Heaven affect a variety of people. From a stranger to a friend, the lives of the five people he encounters are changed forever. This statement means to me that no matter what you do or where you go, your life will be joined together with others, and the actions someone takes will not just affect one, but will affect many. In essence, being “Forever Linked” means that lives are connected and cannot be separated and that one action in a single moment can change lives forever.

               Lives are all connected together and they cannot be separated. Each action has a consequence, whether it is good or bad. You can even impact a stranger that you have never seen before. For example, according to The Five People You Meet in Heaven, it states, “Take one story, viewed from two different angles. It is the same day, the same moment, but one angle ends happily, at an arcade, with the little boy in tawny pants dropping pennies into the Erie Digger machine, and the other ends badly, in a city morgue, where one worker calls another worker over to marvel at the blue skin of the newest arrival.” Eddie, who is the little boy in the tawny pants, does not realize that he is the reason why the Blue Man died. A few hours earlier, Eddie was playing with a baseball which went into the middle of the street, and Eddie decided to retrieve it. At the same exact time, the Blue Man was driving the car that Eddie ran in front of. The road was wet, so to avoid hitting Eddie, the Blue Man swerved, went down an alley, got out of his car after hitting a wall, and had a heart attack. This set of events would not have happened if Eddie would not have ran into the street. The one action that Eddie took, cost the Blue Man his life. Eddie’s action had a bad consequence, and even though he did not know it at the time, Eddie and the Blue Man’s lives were connected.

               All it takes is that one moment for your entire world to change. It can change for the better, or it can change for the worse. You can not only impact the life of someone you have never met, but you can also influence someone you know. For example, according to The Five People You Meet in Heaven, it states, “ ‘For me that little idea was that I told you guys every day. No one gets left behind.’ ‘Why do you say that?’ Eddie asked. The Captain blew smoke, then motioned with the end of the cigarette toward Eddie’s leg. ‘Because I was the one, he said, who shot you.’ ” Back in the war times, Eddie, the Captain, and a few other people from their troop, were captured and taken by the enemy. They were forced to work in the underground mines. After a long captivity, they were finally able to escape. As the gang was leaving, they decided to set fire to the mines and huts. Eddie sat down near a burning hut and was screaming crazy things because he thought that he saw a girl in the flames. Eddie was about to go into the hut, where he would have died, when the Captain shot him in the leg to save his life. This action had a good outcome, but at the same time, it also had a bad outcome. Eddie was alive but he acquired a leg injury that would worsen as he aged. Ultimately, he was way better off than a girl named Tala. Eddie actually did see her in the fire. Tala died because the Captain did not let Eddie go into the hut. Multiple lives were forever changed and affected because of one action. These three peoples’ lives were linked even though they did not know it. Two were friends, and one was a stranger, and their lives were linked together that day and changed forever.

                In conclusion, not one life is separate, and it will never be. Each person’s life is connected to another by the actions that are taken. The actions someone takes have either good or bad consequences, and these actions can alter one’s life for eternity. We impact people every day whether it is strangers or friends, Blue Men or Captains, and wives or little girls. As it is said in The Five People You Meet in Heaven, “…that each affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.” People may lead separate lives that are full of stories, but all of their lives and stories are connected as one. Therefore, there truly are “no random acts.” We are all connected no matter who and where we are, and no matter what we do, or where we go. Finally , it is known that all of our lives are linked together in which they cannot be disjoined, and all it takes is one moment for someone’s world to be altered completely.