5 Books to help you through a hard time
Life has it’s ups and downs, and sometimes it's harder to get back up when we go down.
We feel lost, confused, hopeless and frustrated with everything that surrounds us. Going through a rough patch can be draining, especially if you are facing it all by yourself. In a situation as such, a book can truly be your best asset to come out of it. A book can inspire you, it can uplift you, and sometimes it will give you what you need the most to come out of the ditch: a different perspective. Reading a book will also give you time to reflect and contemplate your own life, your feelings, and your decisions, and will make you realise that in the end, the key to happiness in nowhere else but in you. Below we have put together five books that you should consider reading, particularly if you are going through a hard time. It might help you more than you think!
1. Warrior of the Light: A Manual by Paulo Coelho
This one is a companion volume to Paulo Coelho’s (amazing) The Alchemist. Like most of Coelho’s books, this fiction offers some great pearls for those seeking self-help. The story unfolds as a boy meets a woman at a beach who tells him about an underwater temple. Despite the boy’s attempts to find this temple, and the hearing of its bells ringing, he fails to do so. Years later, the boy, now a grown man, meets again the woman who gives him a notebook. She also gives him directions to write in it about “The warrior of light”, a being who is “capable of understanding the miracle of life, of fighting for something he believes in—and of hearing the bells that the waves set ringing on the seabed”. This book will provide you with great spiritual inspiration and will also give you more practical insights explaining the motives behind everyday behaviour.
2. Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Richard Bach
If you are tired of conforming to everything that is expected of you and you want take your own path and do things your own ways, Jonathan Livingston Seagull might just be the book for you. In this parable, Bach brings us a marvellous story of a seagull who seeks to do higher things than just what is expected of him from his flock: learn the basics of flying so that he can fill his stomach. Jonathan wants to master the art of flying to experience freedom, to escape from the mundane routine his flock is accustomed to. In pursuing such dream, the seagull finds himself exiled from his flock. However, he ends up finding similar gulls like him seeking a higher reason for being. A truly beautiful novel about the importance of drowning out the white noise around you and focusing on your own path, this book will show you how important it is to pursue the freedom of being who you truly are, regardless of what happens.
3. The little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
This timeless tale has great appeal both for children and adults. The book narrates the enchanting story of a lonely little prince fallen on earth from an asteroid. The tale unfolds as the little prince wanders across the planet in search of friends and comes across a variety of character, an absolute monarch, a drunkard, and a businessman. However, each one of them is too caught up in their own issues to be friends with the little prince. He finally meets Antoine De Saint-Exupery who has crash-landed in the middle of the desert, and the two seem to understand each other from the very beginning. This book will make you understand the importance of love, even in the smallest and most insignificant aspects of life. But most of all, the Little Prince will help you grasp the healing power of love and will leave you with some thought-provoking questions about the human condition.
4. The Art of Racing in the Rain - Garth Stein
The narrator of the tear-jerking novel is Enzo, a dog who sees himself being different from other dogs, with an obsession for opposable thumbs. Enzo is a philosopher dog with a human soul, who has educated himself by watching tv, and listening to humans around him. He is quite frustrated with the fact that he can communicate with his owner Denny (a race car driver) only through gestures. By closely observing his owner, Enzo shares with the readers the insights he has gained on human life. On the eve of his death, Enzo reminiscences all the moments he has shared with his family. This story a is a funny, touching and uplifting tale discussing of all the important things in life: love, family, loyalty and hope.
5. The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom
Eddie is an aged war veteran who feels confined in a gray existence fixing rides in an amusement park. From an exuberant young boy, Eddie has aged to become a dull, lonely, regretful old man with no excitement or apparent meaning in his life. On his 83rd birthday, tragedy strikes as he tries to save a girl from a falling cart, and Eddie loses his life. When Eddie awakes in the afterlife, he will learn that his life was not as pointless and uninspired as he believed it to be. Here, he meets five people whose lives he has touched in one way or another, and these five individuals take turns in explaining Eddie his earthly life. In this beautifully crafted novel, Albom will teach you that the afterlife is quite different from what the mainstream belief is, and will help you understand that your life has a greater purpose that what you might see.
