The five people you meet in heaven

¶ … people you meet in heaven. Each was in your life for a reason. You may not have known the reason at the time, and that is what heaven is for. For understanding your life on earth.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven is a story of a lifetime of self misperception, potential waste of spirit, and ultimate redemption.

Eddie gave his all to the war and now works in a meaningless job at the Ruby Pier amusement park. In a heroic gesture, he gives his life saving a child sitting under a falling ride. Waking in a cotton candy-like heaven, he meets with five people -- some strangers and others well-known -- who guide him on a visual and illuminating journey through his life, theoretically proving that not everything is revealed during the time on earth.

The intended purpose for the five interactions is bi-directional; the communicants are seeking closure, Eddie is seeking validation and redemption for a life he is certain was misspent.

Personal Enlightenment

Love and loyalty matter. Even the smallest of kindnesses is recorded and valued in the eternal realm. God's gift of life to mankind is not to be squandered; despite commercial and popular belief, this is the only chance we have to get it right.

Eternity will either be spent in God's presence (i.e., Heaven) or His absence (i.e., Hell). Unless we learn to value life here, how can we appreciate an eternity of God-based glory and value for all eternity?

Five of the Ten commandments focus on God, the other five on others. The Five People You Meet in Heaven -- while inaccurate in its portrayal of the pattern given for eternity -- forced me to think about the inevitable causality to ignoring the needs and well-being of others. Even a cup of water offered to a thirsty man is measured and of value.

Developmental Psychology and Relevance to the Book

In Life Span Development by John W. Santrock, the premise of lifelong development and stage-based psychological adaptation and development are emphasized in a global manner. For example, in Chapter 1, the life-span perspective -- combined with cognitive processes and social age -- is the development paradigm; "development is lifelong, multidimensional, multidirectional, plastic, contextual, multidisciplinary, and involves [author: requires] growth, maintenance, and regulation."

The Five People You Meet in Heaven demonstrates the ebb and flow of developmental theory by allowing the reader a look into the protagonist's life -- his successes with his wife, Marguerite and failures in his childhood and the jungles of the Philippines -- and spanning several years and developmental stages in his life.

In alignment with Santrock's thesis -- chapter 21 of Life Span Development - pondering the meaning and value of one's life typically accelerates in later years. With maturity often comes introspection; Eddie is no exception. We are led to believe, however, that death was not one of those topics about which Eddie mused; it was only after his death that he contemplated the cumulative value of his existence. The five people make this possible.

Personal Application

Typically, death is a foreigner to a person of my years and experience. The occasional friend or peer who dies in a tragic accident is the exception -- something to be shuddered at and ghoulishly picked over in study groups but never embraced as close to home or possible for the young person.

Tragically, this is not true; countless automobile accidents, for example, take the lives of more young adults than any other accident. Why? Reckless assurance that we will live forever, nothing really bad can happen to us -- we have our entire lives ahead, we can change when we are older, and so on are almost cultural cliche.

The exception is the young person who recognizes the fragility of life and the reason for existence in the first place -- to learn to be like God through service to others. Life can be snuffed out in a minute. Eternity cannot.

There is a popular concept promoted by commercialism and marketing which promotes the idea of 'you only go around once, go for the gusto', thereby implying that there are no limitations or consequences to the careless choices of youth.

It is safe to assume that a large percentage of the graying 'baby boomers' might disagree. Having experienced several wars, global tragedies, sociopathic leaders, and personal tragedy, many would argue that this world is the proving ground for the next.

I subscribe to this premise. This life is but a short span and the doorway to the real life we will all live. Taking some of the concepts from the textbook into consideration, sociohistorical and cultural influences have a great deal of impact on the way we are taught to think about life, dying, and death. From these perspectives, these factors change. How can this be? If something is true today, how can it become untrue tomorrow?

Self-accountability, awareness of the life in which we participate willingly or otherwise, and concern for others is paramount to a life well spent. Questioning one's effectiveness, influences, and value system is an ongoing process and, if ignored, can lead to the stunted self-perception and lack of successful choices we see in Eddie's life.