This is one of the books whose effect has remained with me from a long time.
Read it for the first time when in 8th std and then again in college and just again today.
This book is about:let me say what is written on the back cover matches it perfectly.
"People who make their own rules when they know they are right...people who get a special pleasure out of doing something well(even if only for themselves)..people who know there's more to this whole living thing than meets the eye."
The whole book written on the life of a seagull Jonathan Livingston about how he loved to fly and wanted to perfect his art,learn to fly from heights ,at low heights,dive at high speed and so on and how his flock mocked him that he was born as a seagull and that the reason he flies is to eat .If he were meant to fly like that,his body and wings will have been different.They outcast him from the flock and how his life goes from there.The messages are beautifully given through the story of the bird.
Messages given
Everything that limits us we have to put aside.
Break the chains of your thought and you break the chains of your body too.As one's body being nothing more than thought itself.
We are free to go where we wish and to be what we are.
Heaven is not a place,and it is not a time as they (time and place are meaningless).Heaven is being perfect and perfection doesn't have limits.
The best line from book
"We went from one world into another that was almost exactly like it,forgetting right away where we had come from,not caring where we were headed,living for the moment.Do you have any idea how many lives we have gone through before we even got the first idea that there is more to life than eating,or fighting for power?A ten thousand lives!And then another hundred lives until we began to learn that there is such a thing as perfection,and then another hundred again to get the idea that our purpose of living is to find that perfection and show it forth.
we choose our next world through what we learn in this one.Learn nothing,and the next world is the same as this one,all the same limitations to overcome."
One more really good one:
"Overcome space and all we have left is Here.Overcome time,and all we have left is Now."
Application to life
- We complain about our limitations stopping us from achieving.This book sets an example that if a seagull can overcome his body limits to fly at such speeds,then what are the other physical limitations (money,time) that can stop us humans??
- Why people are scared to do what they love and know it is right.Just because others will mock us??
- The mundane,small things in life,we just do it to complete the job and not think if i could have done it in a more better,perfect way.
- There will never be a perfect time or place to do what we want.It should always be here and now.
Well, I have to admit that I am one of those people who feels that there are so many limitations. The messages you have put are really nicely written. Sometimes, books with a lot of number of pages, but they have very small messages written that are so valuable in life. You both have done the right thing in posting this. I hope that after a few time durations (maybe days, months,... ), at some point of time, I will be able to say that I am not one of those people limited by the so-called 'limitations'. Keep up the good work.
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