Mere Drops in the Ocean of Destiny

Everything has a purpose, whether we are aware of it or not. The declarations that "there are no random acts" and "we are all connected" are the overall messages in the novel. The quote is straightforward with the theme. It is asserting that there are no such things as random acts, because nothing genuinely happens by chance. What most people do not realize is that we may not always know the purpose of something or someone in our lives, but that does not belittle the role they play. Often a person may not fully grasp the importance of their own life let alone the lives of others. Just as "one life from another" and a "breeze from the wind" cannot be separated, a drop from the ocean is also inseparable. In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Albom shows readers that human beings do not live separately, but rather together in a series of dependent stories, constantly evolving in unexpected ways.

Even the simplest of acts can alter someone's day and ultimately their whole life. Eddie and the Blue Man's connection support this theory. Young Eddie's quick and heedless decision to run into the street and retrieve his baseball unexpectedly changes a man's life. The Blue Man dies as a result of Eddie's simple, yet inconsiderate action. Without Eddie's existence, the Blue Man would have very likely lived longer than he did. Despite them not knowing each other, destiny connects them in a way they could never imagine. 

If one were to analyze the story as a whole, they will discover the importance of Ruby to the plot. Without her, the pier could never exist. The pier affects Eddie, who in turn, affects countless others. Eddie's entire life revolves around it, and he would have taken a different path in its absence. His fate is entirely dependent on the establishment of Ruby Pier. As stated before, Ruby's existence paved the way for the establishment of the pier, which not only employed Eddie and his father for numerous years, but is also where Eddie would eventually meet his fate. A young man, who happened to be the great-grandson of Ruby, loses his car keys while on the Freddy's Free Fall ride and consequently gets lodged in the ride's mechanics, thus causing it to be defective and harmful. Responding to a call to fix a ride is routine to Eddie, but it never before cost his life. A lost little girl directly underneath a falling cart of an inoperable amusement ride is unconventional for the mechanic. The only way to save the small child is to push her out of the path of inevitable death. He does so and makes the ultimate sacrifice for a complete stranger. Although Ruby and the child are strangers to him, he has intense connections with both.   

The theme is meant to make people think beyond themselves and the present. Connections are something that happen daily with or without our knowledge. Each one of us is here for a reason and without the existence of even one life the world would not be the same. The ocean we call destiny is incomplete if just one mere drop is missing.