One

"Streets and highways connect every place with every other, but each driver chooses where he wants to go. He can drive to a beautiful countryside or to skid row, to a university or a bar, he can follow the road over the horizon or he can drive back and forth in a rut or he can park and not go anywhere.

He can choose his climate by where he drives, Fairbanks or Mexico City or Rio, he can drive a race car or a sedan or a track, he can keep it in perfect shape or let it go to pieces. He can drive without a map and make every turn a surprise or he can plan exactly where he's going to get there.

Every road he will take is already there, before he drives on it and after he's gone past. Every possible trip already exists, and the driver is one with them all. He just chooses, every morning, which trip he'll take that day"

This is an extract from the book I've read recently - "One" by Richard Bach. Interestingly, how it works with me & books.. when I have some problem, or a difficult question in mind, I usually find the book that gives me an idea on a possible answer.

It went just the same with this book. Sergey suggested me reading "The Bridge Across Forever" also by R.Bach, however when I went to the shop I found just a novel called "One", and, as I realized afterwards, that was exactly what I needed that time.

3 main ideas I got from the novel are:

1 - everything depends on our choices (perfect illustration of what it means is in the extract above)

For a long time I couldn't decide for myself what is my phylosophy about this topic: if the things are predetermined or not, if we really choose or just follow what is already planned.

It may seem difficult to live when you believe in idea of personal choice coz it's easy to hope for a planned-for-you-by-someone-else path. I decided to believe in choices.

Now, imagine any situation where you do not have influence. For example, your car gets brocken because some guy drove into it. Couldn't you choose? Almost no. Yet you have at least one thing you can choose, and this is your attitude to the problem.

2 - life is about learning (life is like a book, "when you turn to a page about nuclear war do you despair, or do you learn what it has to tell? Will you die reading the page, or will you move on to other pages, wiser for what you've read?")

3 - ideas are good only when are turned to work ("Ideas aren't thoughts, ther are engineered structure. Notice this and pay attention to the way your ideas are built and you will find dramatic increase in the quality of what you think")

And.. the most powerful message that I found for myself in one of the last chapters.

Main characters of the story (a couple: he and she) come to the place where they live and find themselves in the future.

An old guy reads a book by Richard Bach and then tells to his wife: "I could have done it! Could have done everything in this book! I tell you I damn well could have written that seagull thing he wrote! I used to go out on the jetty when I was a kid, watch the birds to fly. Wished it was me with wings..." His wife replies: "Maybe you could have, Dave".

This extract shocked me so much. After reading it I decided that I will always choose the path that - as I think - is for me, and believe in dreams. I would like to tell my grandchildren about what kind of person I have become and what impact I've made in the world, and what good things I have done for people, but not about the ones that I have dreamed about, yet didn't do.

"I gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth it?"