The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared

Allan Karlsson, a hundred-year-old man sets on another adventure.

The book is a fascinating account of adventures and happenings in Allan’s life. It all fits with the perfect twists of occurrences, fate, whatever you want to call it. Reading the book, I had a feeling that Allan’s life is magnificent, but I guess every life in which you have no expectations other than: nice food, a place above your head, and something to drink is the dream. Given the strange context in which Allan live, it appears that only by constantly wanting to live he sets himself yet on another adventure.

During his 100 year life he has become a bomb specialist, helped create the most deadly bomb, be-friended presidents, and also spend a nice long vacation on the beach (more than a decade), and during the whole time he was an honest, open-minded and completely apolitical person. On the celebration of his 100 year birthday he decides to do something new, other than spending his day in the senior house, so he climbs out the window and just goes off to another place/ adventure.

In a fantastic twist of randomly circumstances, just as anyone would know to expect from an ordinary life, he comes in the possession of a troller full of money, than pursued by the rightful Swedish mafia proprietors, and by the police, suspected of kidnap and manslaughter. While taking part in this exciting adventure the author carefully portrays Allan’s previous history, just to make the reader clear that when we come to know this person we will see how all the things make sense, and culminate in this adventure that started on his 100^th birthday.  It is really a beautifully written account of the story of a man who is true to himself, his morals, his beliefs, and constructs his sense of self-coherence by reflecting on the issues bigger than himself, thus being genuinely open to people, to happenings, to revise his actions and construct his life in accordance to his beliefs. Although the author or the main character doesn’t state the beliefs plainly, by the end of the book I had the feeling that Allan’s main belief is in the power of people accepting themselves and others as they are, without imposing external morals, ideas, or political agendas.

This fantastic story made me reflect on the ways in which I too construct the story of my life. The way in which I can revise what I am living and what I am experiencing, to make sure I spot the difference between unrealistic expectation of events going the way I want them to go, or happening in the putative way that I can imagine them to take place. It is indeed a liberating feeling to know that I will not come to understand all the potential outcome of a decision, situation, and my best action is just to act the way that my morals and beliefs dictate me. Keeping in mind that I cannot envisage all the potential situations is the best feeling, but that doesn’t mean I should be paralysed by inaction; on the contrary that means I am more responsible for how I act and react to everything that comes in my life, thus I will take a step closer to having and behaving in accordance to my free will – because, you see, whenever I know there are multiple course of action, what I choose to do becomes my decision, even is the setting is not in my control, the decision, reaction, action Is.

If a Lion Could Talk - How Animals Think

In my pursuit to understand how cognition appears it seems natural that I would be inclined to read about how animals process the information around them. It was indeed necessary to take into consideration the idea that all the research and study into animal intelligence carries a powerful bias, that of anthropocentrism. The fact that we as humans are bound to our own experience of consciousness, of how we perceive the world around us, limits the understanding of other experiences, namely of that which other animals might have. 

Budiansky’s account of cleverly designed experiments is a proof that we need to take into consideration a lot of factors and conditions before we can state something about the way in which a different species reacts based on the stimuli it receives. The very nature of our sensory organs bounds us “to see” only a part of the environment, the one that is the most important to our own survival. Because we are social specie we put emphasis on the accurate perception of those signals that can offer information about other members of our specie (the social position, symbols of power or wealth, relations amongst ourselves) much like other social species: monkeys, chimpanzees, dogs, horses etc. We tend to consider these signs as those of greater intelligence, just because we are used to intelligence being expressed in this manner. 

Every organism learns through associations during its lifetime. Animals do that all the time and it’s a big advantage to their survival to do so. Learning and responding appropriately to the environment guarantees a better chance at transmitting the genes, and continue the legacy of every species. Only those organisms that adapt can maintain a competitive edge against other members of their species. Associations between stimulus and a response from environment (reward: food, water, sex, inclusion in the social environment etc., or punishment: food deprivation, injuries etc) are a powerful tools in learning. Dogs and other social animals exhibit this feat mostly because we know how to perceive it, but other animals do to. Budiansky offers a great amount of evidence to support this.

Some remarks are so true that I feel compelled to mention them. For instance: “Many animal researchers are fairly confident that more-sensitive experiments will show that apes, at least, do possess some ability to attribute mental states. But the entire search has been a vivid reminder of the dangers of anthropocentrism. The things that apes are good at are the things they evolved to do to survive in their particular ecological niche. And the things an animal is good at generally do not require three decades of ambiguous experiments to discover.”(p. 188) This particular point made me think of all the implications in every aspect of scientific research, mainly the idea that when we set ourselves to test a hypothesis we limit the perceived reality to only a narrow bit, the one that fits into our experimental instruments.

The final passage of the book is another idea that made me think, mainly because it manages to sum up different ideas about evolution. “It is always dangerous to draw moral lessons from the blindly amoral process of evolution. But if there is a lesson here, it is that all of the creatures that evolution has fashion are remarkable in their own right. All have hit upon unique ways to make a living against all probability. And that is something to respect, and to treasure.”(p. 194)

Man’s Search for Meaning

When you are left with nothing but yourself sometimes the resolution becomes clear as an end. But what can you do in face of repeated adversity and conditions no man/woman should ever feel?  Viktor Frankl’s answer to this question emerges from personal suffering and having to put up with conditions that threatened his existence. The answer he gives is that one must find a meaning in everything he/she does, even in pain, in simple pleasures and in trial that every life contains.

To be able to create a meaning out of pain is truly an exercise I can only compare to those made by Buddhist monks, because I imagine that only after meditation or intense thought one can accomplish that the essence of all things lies in the purpose that our actions pertain.

The horrors of being in concentration camps in Auschwitz, Dachau and others and afterwards finding out that those people that made you find a purpose for the pains endured are dead can be hard to live with. And wet his theory of finding a purpose for all there is to life, to ones life, give him strength to carry on living, to find people, things and action that can fulfill the need for meaning, a personal purpose to an individual life.

The book was really inspiring and made me think and realize the meaning behind my actions, and the purpose of chosen paths in life. It made me more aware and more responsible and yet it made me free. I strive to find the purpose of my life, the meaning of my actions and to endure with courage and optimism all that lies ahead in the great unknown of my life.

I also started reading about logotherapy and found it very useful in my work.

"Risipitorii" / (The Wasters)

Being young is always seen as something similar to being free and able to take any course of action or make any decision. Youth is not seen as a period of confusion, indecision or inability to do great things in life. M. Preda sees the young adults as individuals who take great decision easily and are sometimes stunned by small ones.

“Risipitorii”/ The Wasters is a novel of a brief period in anyone’s life, when major decision are prone to take place and some of the decisions made are haste and have an effect that contours the entire life. Decision taken too easily can make an impact on people triggering turning points in a persons search for purpose in life. A young woman who marries a young doctor without having a clear idea about married life, finds herself, after an abortion, left for another woman, and thus seems to forget the purpose of her existence. In the confusion set by her depression she learns to enjoy life once more and knows that from now on she will forever keep a mark of what it means to be without meaning, but will continue to live for a meaning discovered as life succeeds this crisis.

Other crises are described, for instance the meaning of living with the person you love, can appear for those who live it complicated, and yet simple for those seeing it from outside. The search for professional achievement can sometimes fail and leave the person with the impression of uselessness, trying to live with a new purpose. The search for love and fulfillment in a family life can seem daunting and like a purpose for many who see it as eluding their life. 

Many times the thing which we seek most and consider as a purpose is the thing we cannot attain. We continue to force our mind and actions into creating new alternatives for reaching the same idea over and over again, without even considering for a second time if that thing/idea is really what we need to be happy. Sometimes the happiness lies in the process, as it is described throughout the book, Flow. The psychology of optimal experience, and I believe that the process of creating and achieving your purpose is one of the most personal things one can do with their life.

Cloud Atlas

When you see the title you start projecting things regarding the book… It’s not a bad thing to do, as the book tells the story of different generations, different times an yet they all are intertwined in a beautiful, whole narration, that makes you think more about your values.

Would you be able to save someone from slavery? Would you be able to save yourself? Could you pursue the truth with the cost of your life? Would you realize that your life is not perfect? Or would you have the courage to speak your mind? These are some of the question that arises from reading the book. Its characters are divided into stories that take place at different times in somewhat different locations.

One can feel a thread throughout the book. It’s the thread which puts the characters into relations to one another, and that thread seems to be the essence of humanity, the building block of moral values, the thing that sets apart good from evil. Finding the thread in your own life and thoughts is easy, because you are to choose from a variety of characters that depict several periods of a life. You not only seem to transcend into different times, but you are left with the longing to return…

A great book to read indeed, astonishing in its narration and real in its dialogues. Truly it is set to make an influence, and has made an influence on me.

The Well-Beloved

Every person has her/his own opinion about what drives them through life. Thomas Hardy chooses to describe the idea which might drive a person to seek love.

When a sculptor's idea about perfection is driving him to love women in which this perfection resides temporary his whole life is marked by that. It seemed to me like an egocentric way of seeing the beauty in the women which he loved. It was only through the action of his jade "the well-beloved" which he seeks, that any of his romantic interests gained any beauty, and after he considered that the spirit of his well-beloved had passed from that body to another, he only viewed it like a carcass, not able to generate any feelings of attraction.

His pursuit leads him to hurt the first woman which he asked to marry him(Avice), and after meeting the woman's girl(Avice the second) he realizes that what he thought he was searching(the well-beloved), was something that others might search for to, but not under the same name. As fate will have it, he falls in love with Avice the second(her mother dies before) and want to marry her also, but she is wed to another man. He assumes the role of a protector and continues his life, until, after some 20 years he hears again from Avice and goes to see her. Then he sees her girl, a beautiful woman of 21 which resembles most his youth love. She's also an Avice,the third, and he tries to marry her also, but being sixty years old doesn't manage to do that, in spite of the support Avice, the mother, has shown. This intricate plot resumes itself by the death of Avice(the second) after she finds out that her daughter elopes to wed secretly with her sweetheart.

One to many tries for the character, and he falls ill, an illness which has the effect of aging him severely and depleting him of his muse/curse(the search of a well-beloved).

It shows once more that an ideal of something cannot be retain permanently into someone's mind, as the mind is set to age; and that being to trapped in the pursuit of perfection can make somebody alienate from society.

Ultimately he never got a chance to love for a longer time the person in which he thought his Well-Beloved resided. His curse was broken by old age, when he didn't feel any feeling of art, beauty and physical attraction to anybody.