In life one needs doses of optimism to stay hopeful and positive thinking. Unlike pessimists, optimists choose to see the glass as half full rather than half empty. Optimism helps us to interpret situations in the best possible light. Perhaps optimism plus a small dose of realism coupled with a dash of pessimism to know that failure can happen are probably the recipes for us to stay resilient through life.
I have often thought that I am an optimistic person until I did some optimism quiz from some website sometime ago. I came to conclude that the pessimism trait must have unsuspectingly crept up on me after having stayed in the legal profession a tad too long. Unfulfilled dreams are quite a few, perhaps it is time for me to seriously think about how to go about achieving them.
Celebrities make
it seem like easy to reinvent oneself. I guess if you have already built a name
for yourself, it is probably less daunting to move on to a new line of career that you
want to venture into but even fame cannot guarantee success in your new venture. I am never comfortable with building a personal brand
through Linkedin nor Skillpage as I find my professional life ordinary though it is definitely in my
interest to build myself a brand in my profession. Writing is what I care about
though it has taken me a long while to let friends and acquaintances know that
writing is my passion.
Writing helps me
to articulate my thoughts and its creative process can be therapeutic. I read a
great deal partly because I love to read. Reading definitely helps me to write
better. I am eager to translate my thoughts into written words and I like to tell stories. At night I write
even when my mind is terribly exhausted. I make a coffee and I make Chinese tea
with the hope that all these drinks will help me stay awake. I get excited in
anticipation of watching some films and attending tennis matches at grand slams
( so far I have only been to the Australian Open ) but I feel far more excited
just browsing around and finding books that are promising reads. I find
that life can be absurd and yet it
is full of surprises that are not necessarily bad. I find the idiosyncrasies
of different groups of people interesting and the ironies of
life fascinating. I am constantly amazed how these published writers can
capture the intricacies of life and make their characters credibly
complex.
The 100 Year- Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared is an entertaining read. The Swedish author,Jonas Jonasson is very clever in weaving a story with
a backdrop that spins across several geographical locations around the world
and also it takes you on a journey through some major historical events of the twentieth century. These are
some of the interesting facts about the protagonist, Allan Karlsson.
'Allan Emmanuel Karlsson was
born on May 2 ,1905. The day before, his mother had marched on the May Day
procession in Flen and demonstrated on behalf of women’s suffrage, an
eight-hour working day, and other utopian demands.'
Allan’s father
was of both a considerate and an angry nature. He was considerate with his
family but he was angry with
society in general and one day he lost his job on the railways after punching a
passenger who happened to announce that he was on his way to Stockholm with
thousands of others to visit the King in the royal palace. Allan’s father left
the country and emigrated to Russia where he started to waver in his belief in
the blessings of socialism.
Allan was left
to fend for himself at the young age of fifteen when his mother died by which
time his dad had already been killed in Russia. At age thirteen, Allan was
already accomplished in making explosions by mixing chemical ingredients and he
continued to develop new formulas for making dynamites in his own company. He
lived an isolated life.
'But what finally formed young
Allan’s philosophy of life were his mother’s words when they received the news
of his father’s death. It took a while before the message seeped into his soul,
but once there, it was there forever:
Things are what they are, and
whatever will be will be.
That meant, among other things,
that you didn’t make a fuss, especially when there was good reasons to do so,
for example, when they heard the news about his father’s death. ……………
Allan Karlsson didn’t ask much of
life. He just wanted a bed, lots of food, something to do , and now and then a
glass of vodka. If these requirements were met, he could stand most things.'
When Allan is a
few months shy of a hundred years old, he ends up in a nursing home where he
has to abide by the mile-long list of rules and regulation including no smoking
and no drinking. “Alcohol kills” is how Alice, the Director of Malmköping’s Old Folks’ Home has justified the “no
alcohol” rule. As it happens,
despites his complaining knees and body aches and pains, Allan decides to
escape just when the staff at the Old Folks’ home has started to prepare for
his 100th birthday. He climbs out the window and embarks on a
hilarious roller coaster journey where he meets eccentric characters and has
the most unexpected windfall when a young man with long greasy hair and
scraggly beard and a jean jacket asks him to mind his big, grey suitcase on wheels
when the latter goes to the restroom to relieve himself . The uncouth young man
does not seem to hear that Allan has a bus to catch and thus when the bus pulls
up, Allan says yes to life and drags along the suitcase which he later
discovers that it contains 50 million crowns drug money. Allan becomes the target for the gangsters
who call themselves “ Never Again” and also the prime suspect for murder after some of these gangsters are found dead.
While he is at
the wrong place at the wrong time, Allan
seems to get lucky all the time and somehow things work out for him. Allan is a larger
than life character whose optimism definitely pays off even in his ripe old
age. The story is very funny indeed.
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