Few weeks ago, I decided to read “One Day” and realized how lucky I am to finish it. The book made me appreciate and love the idea of friendship, love, conversations, dreams, future, photography, letters and travelling. It’s a complete package! The book’s approach is different, it’s really for young adults like me (ahem! yes, like me) who at one point in their lives wonder where their lives are going, or what their dreams are and how they’ll be able to achieve them. The book may also be for those in the mid-20s, mid-30′s to 40′s, yes, that’s how powerful the book is. The book made me wonder how my life would be ten, twenty years from now, and I really really want to have an answer, but I just cant. Things happen, shit happens, and most especially life happens.
My favorite part of the book is how it was able to give me a picture of friendship that cannot be broken no matter what, a friendship so tested that people come and go into the characters’ lives and yet their friendship stays the same and became stronger… it also became the best foundation of their love.
“What are you going to do with your life?” In one way or another it seemed that people had been asking her this forever; teachers, her parents, friends at three in the morning, but the question had never seemed this pressing and still she was no nearer an answer. The future rose up ahead of her, a succession of empty days, each more daunting and unknowable than the one before her. How would she ever fill them all?”- Emma, One Day, p. 433
This paragraph caught my attention because reading it was like narrating my own situation. When you’re in college, especially when you’re a Senior, be prepared for such questions and be not surprised when you would stare blankly thinking of an answer to the question. I’ve been asked the same thing over and over again since I entered college, and in one way or another it keeps me wondering and at the same time, it pressures me. I guess, it depends on the person, how he or she will take things in life. So I guess, it’s still up to me, the hard thing is that, the mere fact that I sometimes over-think such things makes me really wonder what life after graduation has for me. Sometimes, hearing the plans my parents and relatives have for me (or wished me to have) makes me pressured and makes me want to achieve them somehow, and yet, I cannot guarantee success all the time, I know it will never be easy, but somehow, I hope it to be a little easy for me.
And yet in the same page, Emma tried to answer the questions imposed to her:
“Go out there with your passion and your electric typewriter and work hard at…something. Change lives through art maybe. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved, if you ever get the chance. "
One Day… I will read this book again.
P.S. The filming of One Day movie’s done and here’s a video of the Behind-the-scenes.
