Looking For Alaska

Another brick in the wall

It was on highway 1, California, that I first got to meet Alaska Young. Riding shotgun, the ample, dark-blue Pacific stretching out on my right, I found myself sitting there hopelessly bored. To get my mind off my two brothers playing the animal-chain game, in which the participants try to make a chain of animals by making every last letter the first one of the following animal, I resolved to start reading 'Looking for Alaska', by author John Green.

2 days, 500 kilometers and 263 pages later I closed the book to experience both the figurative and literal meaning of 'jaw-dropping'. The novel had utterly blown me away, leaving me with two new, major views on life.

The first significant thought that struck me is best summarized by quoting the novel: “I go to seek a Great Perhaps. So I don't have to wait until I die to start seeking it.” These words as said by one of the main characters, Alaska Young, embody the lesson I have learned reading the novel. She meets the main character and catapults him out of his ordinary life into her crazy, adventurous world. By doing so she shows him that there is a whole new world out there to explore. It is that thought that inspired me in many ways. It has left me not only with the hunger for new experiences, but also made me aware that I should go out there and

actually look for it in the future.

A second quote conveys the other, more thorough, perspective I got on life.

“You just use the future to escape the present.” Once more Green managed to completely astonish me through Alaska's words. This time she convinced me to stop fantasizing about the Great Perhaps. She portrays the catch that is intertwined in looking for happiness in your life, which is realizing that your future (and Great Perhaps) are determined by your actions in the present. It became clear to me that I was actually shaping my future with every step I took. To escape the road everyone expects you to take, and take the road less traveled, was and is my new goal in

life.

Those two thoughts have occupied my mind ever since I finished the final chapter of the novel. The scenery on Highway 1 seemed more beautiful than before, the radio blasted out Pink Floyd's 'another brick in the wall', whose lyrics suddenly carried much more meaning. And just as my little brother announced gleefully that he had finally found an animal starting with “p” (pelican), I realized that I was living my life at that moment, in an unknown country, gaining new experiences every moment. It is thanks to Alaska, that all in all, I won't be another brick in the wall.