Veronika Decides to Die..

I am about to close the chapters on Paulo Coelho's, Veronika Decides to Die, and it interests me that reasons often exist for the littlest things experience, feel and do.

Trivial to some, I find life's tokens, blessings and teachings comes in forms and sizes usually unexpected.

I purchased this book huffily at the airport terminal on the en route to crinkle free trip to Bandung and Jakarta early one morning. I was to leave the house at 4am for this flight when my chartered ride did not arrive.
Hastily finding an alternative, I'm grateful for the ride to the terminal, amidst trying to calm my nerves. However,sore was I, as I had left Paulo Coelho's Portobello's Witch at home. A book I had eagerly wanted to read as the synopsis had enticed me days prior to the trip.

I was mad at myself for having troubled others, mad that I wanted my crinkle free break to start out right, mad that the beginning of my break was turning out to be sour.

Months before deciding on this form of escapism, knots inside me were tightening.
It is true what people tell you about recharging, applying the brakes, and putting a stop if you've had enough.
I felt very much all that, to points where I wanted to stop even trying. Wanted to sleep with those pills and not wanting to open my eyes again. Low spirits, having very different dreams, aspirations, ideals, values, I felt I didn't fit in life anymore.

I depended on this source of escapism more and more .. I needed to run the status quo, I wanted to hide from the usual questions and brush all the usual disappointments under the carpet..

Standing in the bookshop of the low cost terminal, I saw my second newly purchased book, with the words Decides and Die attracting me to its sypnosis. A story about a girl, who had everything in the world, deciding to die, after realising that there was no reason for living... The story starts this way, but ends rather differently..

In the book, the unveiling of her uniqueness, the pecularities in the circles she keeps, the different desires she was exposed to.. and the surrendering of herself to the very passion that in the end drives her living soul... struck me .. hard.

One glaring viewpoint was the issue of normality. Veronika ended up in a mental institution as her behaviour was categorised as abnormal.

Truly, really, what is normality. I argued long windedly with an Indonesian journalist about societal's norms and "acceptable" social behaviour. He asked me a question that opens a kaleidoscope of views.. Is there a universal acceptance of what is normal in society....
I wanted to differ for what I've been conditioned to believe as societal's norms,may not be norms after all.

We dissected this question, only to leave ourselves more boggled, questions to whether norms are just a way of life accepted by a large number of people or are they a set rules to follow... what about the minorities, what about the differences..
To lift from Coelho's writing, one questioned that if the hands of clock were designed to move in the opposite direction, would that be considered abnormal..

My escapism to Indonesia provided me with my questions than answers naturally,and in a usual long-winded, roundabout way, I find that amidst all my knots and tightening screws in my head, there are reasons.

Reasons to why the ride didn't show up, to why I left my things behind and to why Veronika entered my life the way she did.

It reminded me that I have to catch my breath, hold on and let go. Actions often I avoid for fear of losing, hurting and experiencing disappointment.

While it is nice to realise the irony of that very feeling of life is encapsulated in writings of another, it drives home a point that life is very real, with or without the clock ticking in the right direction.