No other books I've read taught me more about life and death than Mitch Albom's Tuesdays With Morrie and The Five People You Meet in Heaven.

Tuesdays With Morrie is a collection of lessons by Albom's dying college professor, Morrie. Suffering from ASL (Lou Gehrig Disease), Morrie was slowly succumbing to the degenerative disease. He was painfully aware of his deteriorating body, but he was above self-pity. Sure, he would cry -crying is OK once in a while, he said- when he woke up in some mornings, finding himself in physical pain. He made it a point, however, to live his life to the fullest for the rest of those days. I like his idea about detaching oneself from emotions. He wasn't advocating that we ignore our feelings but rather, we should delve into them. Only after gaining an understanding of our emotions, can we shy away when anxiety, envy, hatred and self-pity strike (taking the lesson to heart, I'm trying not to be too worried about my UCAS form not reaching the person-in-charge but it's hard when I'm the only one who hasn't received the acknowledgement-of-receipt card).

A meaningful life is certainly not elusive when love is abound. Of the many aphorisms from Morrie, I like this best: "Love each other or perish". Remember Tom Cruise’s famous line from Jerry Maguire? “Complete me,” he implored his on-screen love interest played by Renée Zellweger. I think Tom Cruise summed up best the meaning of love with that simple yet profound string of words. There’s nothing like being loved and giving it in return; it gives you a sense of well-being and wholeness. Not just love you share with your other half, but with your family and community as well.

There are people on deathbed who cling on to life desperately; they are the ones who have regrets and would trade anything for that one more chance. In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Albom suggested that death isn't really the end; it's the beginning of a journey that will end with you gaining the knowledge that there was a purpose in your life. The book, aptly, begins with an end; the death of Eddie. In heaven, he would meet 5 people who had crossed his path at one point or another in his life, with or without him knowing. They would teach him on a myriad of lessons; he would learn forgiveness, sacrifice, love and lastly the realisation that everything in his life had happened for a reason.

Everything does happen for a reason. The other day, the rain made it just perfect for a nice nap instead of a good game of badminton. I woke up late in the evening (around 7pm) and was greeted by this awesome sight of the rainbow when looking out of the window. If I had been busy serving and returning shuttlecocks that day, I would have missed that great arc of rainbow and not had taken the shot above. I'd to photoshop-edit the photo to accentuate the rainbow but I love it all the same. There's something about the rainbow against the gloomy sky that says that things will get OK no matter how bleak life looks. Signing off, here's Tony Bennett's Somewhere Over the Rainbow to light up your day. Enjoy!