"rather a miracle happened: another day of life"

I just finished reading another book by Paulo Coehlo, "Veronika Decides to Die." It's one of those books that I just happened to pick up at the right time in my life.

I'm currently sitting in a bed in the home of Kristen, my fellow intern from Uganda, just outside San Antonio, Texas. I'm currently unemployed, having quit my job and ending my employment last Friday. My goal for this cross country trek is to reconnect with God and myself, and to try and figure out what I'm going to do next. I'm blessed to have unlimited options, but cursed with an inability to make decisions. :/

This book, however, was incredible. It's all about the human tendency to just go through the motions of life, our fear of stepping outside our norm and failing.

I'm trying to learn to live without that fear, to learn to put it into perspective. To realize that "the worst than could happen" isn't all that bad, that one failure is not a big deal, that mistakes help us to grow. I don't want to live my life regretting all the things I could have done, dreaming of opportunities I was afraid of attempting, wishing for "do-overs" that aren't possible.

And here is a long excerpt from the book, in hopes that it will inspire you as it does me:

(this is spoken by a character in the book, who is about to be released from Villete, the insane asylum)

"If I stay here any longer, I won't leave at all. I'm cured of my depression, but in Villete, I've learned that there are other kinds of insanity. I want to carry those with me and begin to see life with my own eyes.

"When I came here, I was deeply depressed. Now I'm proud to say I'm insane. Outside, I'll behave exactly like everyone else. I'll go shopping at the supermarket, I'll exchange trivialities with my friends, I'll waste precious time watching television. But I know that my soul is free and that I can dream and talk with other worlds that, before I came here, I didn't even imagine existed.

"I'm going to allow myself to do a few foolish things, just so that people can say: 'She's just been released from Villete.' But I know that my soul is complete, because my life has meaning. I'll be able to look at a sunset and believe that God is behind it. When someone irritates me, I'll tell them what I think of them, and I won't worry what they think of me, because everyone will say: 'She's just been released from Villete.'

"I'll look at men in the street, right in their eyes, and I won't feel guilty about feeling desired. But immediately after that, I'll go into a shop selling imported goods, buy the best wines my money can buy, and I'll drink that wine with the husband I adore because I want to laugh with him again.

"And laughing he'll say: 'You're crazy!' And I'll say: 'Of course I am, I was in Villete, remember! And madness freed me. Now, my dear husband, you mush have a vacation every year, and make me climb some dangerous mountains, because I need to run the risk of being alive."