Have you ever read a book that changed your life?
In 2008 I left Southern California, everything and everyone I knew, for Boston. The reasons were many, but what it all boiled down to really was a gut feeling. That little voice that whispered to me for years was now screaming “It’s time! Go now!” So off I went, with no job and little money, to move in with a slightly unhinged roommate I found online.
In the first couple of months, between job searches, I spent my time reading and that’s when I found it. On Love by Alain de Botton, and it changed my perspective, my attitude, my life.
On Love is a simple story- boy meets girl on a flight and he is in love by the time they land on the tarmac. He is infatuated with her hair, her eyes, and taste in books, but loathes her choice of accessories. The intense infatuation between them at the start is predictable, and so, unfortunately is their decline. It is the examination and subsequent rebirth of the male character who was jilted that proved to be my reawakening.
On the surface this is not a traditional happily ever after story, and yet in one very important way it is all that and more. This is what resonated with me. After a disastrous marriage in my early twenties I was terrified to make another mistake. And so as a result I was intentionally single for the better part of ten years when I took the leap to move across the country. As I read the novel I, like so many, sympathized deeply with the discarded lover as he went through the physical and psychological after effects of the relationship. And then something remarkable happened. Once he had licked his wounds, and taken time to reflect, he found himself falling in love with someone new! This was a revelation. I’d spent the better part of a decade terrified to make another mistake, but this story led me into a new way of thinking. If I did make the wrong choice I would survive, and be strong enough to try again, and again, until I found the right person for me.
This novel gave me the tools I needed to cross over from one world to the next. Broken hearts and broken trust were not where real love ended, but where strength and knowledge were born.
And can you guess what happened next? Why the most predictable thing of course! Soon after my reawakening I met a wonderful, kind man who is now my husband.
Have you read a book that changed your life? I’d love to hear about it!
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