Veronica Decides To Die ― 6 Powerful Life-Saving Lessons

Book – Veronica Decides To Die
Author – Paulo Coelho
Genre – Fiction/ Philosophy

As is our custom of writing about books, let’s begin with a hard-hitting quote from the book, Veronica decides to die.

Here inside, everyone can say what they like, do what they want, without being criticised, after all, they’re in a Mental hospital.

About the Book:-

Veronica Decides To Die is an exquisite tale of a young woman Veronica, who has everything that an ordinary human longs for. Despite being well-equipped with all the worldly comforts, she is not at all happy and is fed up with a life where one day is exactly like the other.

Further augmenting her frustration is the fear of old age and the multitude of incessant problems that it encompasses. Overwhelmed by the fear of originality fading from her life, she is absolutely convinced that she would gain nothing by continuing to live.

In search of an escape from the tragedy of repetitive existence, she decides to terminate her life. In a dramatic turn of events that follow, she ends up in a mental hospital where she is told that the sleeping pills she took have cut short her life span and she would die in a few days.

While waiting for her doomsday, she meets people who completely change her perspective towards life and reinvigorate in her a desire to stay alive. They help her discover versions of her, which she herself was never aware of.

In her words,

When I took the pills, I wanted to kill someone I hated. I didn’t know that other Veronikas existed inside me, Veronikas that I could love.

Life – Lessons from Veronica Decides To Die:

#1: The Importance of Escaping the Rules’ Paradox:-

Society had more and more rules, and laws that contradicted the rules, and new rules that contradicted the laws. People felt too frightened to take even a step outside the invisible regulation that guided everyone’s lives.

Conquered by the fear of being wrong, of not doing what’s expected of us, we diligently start following the nonsensically designed manual of good behavior. What’s ironic is that despite knowing that right and wrong is a subjective matter, we often fall into the rules’ trap. What may be a well-accepted rule of society today, is very likely to turn out into a source of laughter for the coming generations.

So, inhibiting our lives for the sake of appeasing the meaningless societal establishments is equivalent to digging our graves while we are still alive. To corroborate my words, let me quote Yuval Noah Harari in his book Homo Deus: A brief History of Tomorrow,

“The greatest scientific discovery was the discovery of ignorance. Once humans realized how little they knew about the world, they suddenly had a very good reason to seek new knowledge, which opened up the scientific road to progress.”

Unless and until we accept that our current values are deeply inveterated with ignorance, We can’t walk the path of progress.

#2: Real Love Evolves:-

Veronica had given up many of her desires so that her parents would continue to love her as they had when she was a child, even though she knew that real love changes and grows with time and discovers new ways of expressing itself.

That’s one of the most veritable lessons one can get. Real love Evolves and finds new ways of expressing itself. A healthy relationship must have a tempting balance of Give-and-Take. The sustainability of any relationship hinges on that balance.

Also, we experience love physically, mentally, and emotionally. Initially, it’s about physical intimacy and inexplicable attraction in the case of lovers and excessive dependence on parents in the case of children. But this is the initial stage and love can’t stay there forever.

As the sexual desire in case of a couple’s relationship and dependence on parents in case of the parent-child relationship begins to de-escalate, love has to change the formwork to ensure its survival.

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#3: You can’t give up on your Life for an Impossible love:-

We can’t use an Impossible Love as an excuse, a pretext for breaking ties with life.

There are times in life when your love for someone cannot be realized into anything meaningful. It hurts but there is not much you can do about it. Neither you are the first one to experience it nor will you be the last.
When that happens, all you are left with is, the following two options to choose from:

Either to waste your lives thinking, What if I had fought a little harder?, and keep dwelling rest of your life in the disappointment of The Impossible Love.
or,
Channelize that frustration into creating something meaningful.

The 1st lot of people become embittered and end up plunging into depression or develop self-destructive tendencies whereas from the 2nd lot arise people like Shiv Kumar Batalvi and France Prešeren who ended up producing some of the finest poetries and created a whole legend around their names.

#4: Don’t Inhibit Your Emotions ― We all need a little madness in us:-

When I took the pills, I wanted to kill someone I hated, I didn’t know that other Veronicas existed inside me, Veronicas that I could love

Negative feelings can leave only when they are allowed to surface. Suppressing them only increases the burden of rancor in our hearts.

Veronica realized that in the process of guarding her facade of strength and indifference, she might have overcome her minor defects but has been convincingly defeated by matters of fundamental importance.

Guilty of suppressing hundreds of other Veronicas inside her with the self-destructing tools of Self-control aided with masks of appropriate behavior, Veronica wanted to spend her remaining time feeling every emotion.

Also Read: Slay the 21st Century with These 15 Powerful Life Lessons from Charles Bukowski

#5: Don’t Trap yourself into the monotonous routine-mindset:-

I want you to understand one thing: Apart from certain grave pathological cases, people only go Mad when they try to Escape from Routine.

When Veronica decided to get a job, she rejected a tempting offer from a renowned company in favor of a so-called secure job. Till here, everything was fine.

The problem began when she ended up trapping herself into the monotonous timetable, always making sure she wasn’t perceived as a threat by her superiors. She became contented. All she wanted was her salary at the end of the month.
When she had achieved almost everything she wanted in her life, she ended up concluding that her existence had no meaning.

This reminds me of the words of Mark Manson in The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

Our crisis is no longer material; it’s existential.

In our fickle pursuit of a nonchalant life, we end up trapping ourselves into a monochromatic one. In doing so though we gain initial comfort but in the long term end up eradicating the word, “Perhaps” from our lexicon.

#6: You are Not in the Way, You are the Way:-

Stop thinking all the time that you’re in the Way, that you’re bothering the person next to you, If people don’t like it, they can complain

If people don’t like it, they can complain. It’s as simple as that.

Just like people are entitled to think what they want, we too are entitled to think what we want. What people think of us in no way can change who we are and what we are capable of, unless we allow them to do so. In our pointless want of being gladly accepted, we often keep troubling ourselves with what others are thinking about us.

Okay, let me put it this way. No one knows what your situation is. Blatantly speaking, no one really cares to know. But despite that, everyone wants to say something. So they start giving you advice with all the superficial knowledge they have.
And the irony is that we care for their advice despite knowing that it’s we who will have to live with the consequences of our decisions.

Stephen Chbosky in The Perks of Being a Wallflower had said,

“You can’t just sit there and put everyone’s lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love.”

It’s a well-established fact that it’s impossible to live up to everyone’s expectations. But if you are still not able to give up on your reckless pursuit of being a people-pleaser, just make sure you start the pleasing process from yourself.

This book by Paulo Coelho is perfectly calibrated to infuse you with hope during your darkest of times.

I hope you loved reading the review and enjoyed the lessons too. It’s one of those books that every philosophy lover must check out.

Grab your copy here from Amazon:-

Also Read: The Last Lecture- The 9 Powerful Life Lessons from a Dying Professor