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Veronika Decides to Die

Even though I've neglected posting, I've been quite busy reading. This is the latest resident on my night stand.

Once again Paulo Coelho explores the potential personal fulfillment that each person has within them. Veronika is a young Slovenia woman who decides to commit suicide. She initially fails, however, and finds herself in an insane asylum where she will stay until the heart-damaging effects of her overdose do her in. As she waits for death, she becomes more reflective about herself.

At one point, she asks the doctor in charge of her case to let her leave the asylum to live out her final day. She says

"I want to leave here so that I can die outside. I need to visit Ljubjana castle. It's always been there, and I've never even had the curiosity to go and see it at close range. I need to talk to the woman who sells chestnuts in winter and flowers in the spring. We passed each other so often, and I never once asked her how she was. And I want to go out without a jacket and walk in the snow. I want to find out what extreme cold feels like, I, who always so well wrapped up, so afraid of catching a cold.

"In short, Dr. Igor, I want to feel the rain on my face, to smile at any man I feel attracted to, to accept all the coffees men might buy more me. I want to kiss my mother, tell her I love her, weep in her lap, unashamed of showing my feelings, because they were always there even though I hid them." (p. 139)

Why is it that we are afraid to simply reveal who we really are until we are faced with the prospect of dying?