I found For One More Day engrossing. Even though I read it approximately a year ago, I still clearly remember the lessons it taught me. It was like every other Mitch Albom book I have read; it taught me important life lessons. Albom uses simple language to teach meaningful lessons.
This book is about Charley Benetto, a broken man living under alcohol. His life was full of regrets and eventually he tried to take his own life by drunk driving. He then became unconscious and started to hallucinate. He dreamt of spending one more day with his beloved mother and by the end of the dream his mother persuaded him to forgive himself. Afterwards he lived his life to the fullest and died with no regrets.
The life lessons of For One More Day us are truly intriguing. One of them is to appreciate what one has right now, and to also enjoy it. Albom always tells his readers this message. One doesn’t know how much that certain thing signified until that certain thing is out of one’s life. For Benetto, he didn’t know how much he loved his mother until she was gone. He regretted not being able to spend the last moments with her. However, he was lucky enough to spend one more day with his mother, and he gave himself a second chance in life. Appreciate what you have right now and truly treasure it in order to live your life to the fullest.
The other lesson taught by Albom is about accepting loves warm embrace, and sharing your heart and feelings with someone else. Doing this will make one a much more happier person. Benetto kept everyone away from his life and turned to alcohol. He tried to take his own life because he was so depressed and almost died from an accident. After forgiving himself, he decided to move next to his daughter and reconcile with his ex-wife, Catherine. He quit drinking and started to live a happy life.
Albom conveyed these life lessons well. Even though the language is simple and the sentences aren’t complicated, the reader still has to read every paragraph carefully in order to get the main message. This story seems random at first but after reading the whole book, everything comes together like pieces of an elaborate puzzle.
Albom choses to keep the reader guessing all the time in order to grab the reader’s attention. At the beginning, there isn’t concrete evidence that Benetto was in dream, even though Albom did make it clear that Benetto’s mother died. It compels the reader to guess whether Benetto was living, in heaven, or simply in a dream. Albom wants to grab the reader’s attention in order to let the reader think like Albom. This draws the reader in and also has the reader thinking more of the underlying message between the words.
I strongly recommend reading this book for people who are seeking to be happy. It is easy to read and hard to put down. I have become a new person after reading books by Albom and I try to live my life to the fullest. The lessons I learnt from Albom will be instilled in me whilst I live my Middlebury life.