Looking for Alaska

"We are all going, I thought, and it applies to turtles and turlenecks, Alaska the girl and Alaska the place, because nothing can last, not even the earth itself. The Buddha said that suffering was caused by desire, we'd learned, and that the cessation of desire meant the cessation of suffering. When you stopped wishing things wouldn't fall apart, you'd stop suffering when they did." 

Forgive and forget?

"The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive." That is Miles's answer to Alaska's religion question "How will we ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering?" (based on the words of Simon Bolivar). In this book there are a few people who need to forgive and be forgiven. The first of course being Alaska for possibly (SPOILER ALERT) having killed herself. They need to forgive her for not swerving, for storming out that night, for always being so crazy. They also need to forgive themselves for letting her go that night, none of them had any idea what was going to happen. 

Alaska had never forgiven herself for letting her mother die. She was never able to forgive herself for not calling 911 when her mother collapsed. Because she never forgave herself she was always stuck in her own labyrinth of suffering and when the time came when she was trashed, upset, and out of control she found her way out of the labyrinth by killing herself (or so it would seem). 

In Miles's paper there's also a part about forgetting he writes, "I will forget her, yes. That which came together will fall apart imperceptibly slowly, and I will forget, but she will forgive my forgetting, just as I forgive her for forgetting me and the Colonel and everyone but herself and her mom in those last moments she spent as a person. I know now that she forgives me for being dumb and scared and doing the dumb and scared thing. I know she forgives me, just as her mother forgives her." One of the things he's referencing here is the zen principle that everything that comes together will eventually fall apart. Later in his paper he talks more about that, but here he's saying that since he knew her, one day he will forget her. When Alaska was out driving that night she was only thinking about letting her mother down again, she never thought of her friends who cared about her, or really anyone else. They have to forgive her for not thinking of them just as she will have to forgive them for forgetting her. (Not sure if this makes any sense......) 

Looking for Alaska

“I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God." This quote tells the story of Rabe’a al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism. She was seen running threw her village with a flaming torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other.  I think in a way this is what our teachers and Rabbis have wanted to say to us. Don’t love G-d because there’s a reward if you follow the mitzvot, and don’t follow them just for the fear of punishment, but love G-d because He is G-d and He should be loved. Loving G-d for the reward is like loving your mother because she’ll give you presents, or loving your mother because you’re scared she’ll scream at you if you don’t, but you should on principle love your mother because she’s your mother. Love for G-d like love for your mother should be unconditional. 

The Third Book

So for my final book to write about I'm torn I just read two amazing book, they're both different in many ways and similar in some. One is The Promise by Chaim Potok and the other is Looking for Alaska by John Green. If I want to keep up on my always uplifting Holocaust books I should write about The Promise. Whatever, I think I'll just go for Looking for Alaska...