A couple of housekeeping things to get out of the way, and then I’ll dive into the book review.

Things I’m grateful for: Friends and family I love to spend time with. Fall in Minnesota even if’s it’s cold and rainy one day and blazing hot the next. My apartment complex finally turned on the heat, a big reason I have come to love October when it rolls around. Crazy, brilliant dreams. This time of year I have these weird complex dreams I half remember in the morning. Some good story ideas in there.

The Smile Has Left Your Eyes: It’s not often that I watch Korean dramas as they are being aired each week, but I make exceptions for either stories or actors that I really like. Viki.com has gotten the license for The Smile Has Left Your Eyes (or Hundred Million Stars from the Sky). Hopefully, I will get my review of each episode out early in the week, but it just depends when the English subtitles are added. Amazingly enough, even though I’ve watched a ton of Korean TV, I am not yet fluent in Korean. The Smile is a creepy murder mystery starring my current favorite actor Seo In Guk. He finally has his dream of playing a villain. Also starring the delightful Jung So Min from Playful Kiss and D-Day. This is a remake of a Japanese show that was pretty popular awhile ago.

Book review: How to Stop Time by Matt Haig isn’t so much an instruction manual as a thinking manual. Sometimes it’s fun to dream about living forever or near-forever and just having so much time to do whatever. The story is narrated by Tom Hazard, a man who has loads of time and opportunities, but just can’t get out of his old man head.

Like Tom, I am now in my forties, and it’s true the older you get, sometimes the memories from the past just come flooding in, clearer than you would have thought possible, and if your mind dwells there, you can miss the very real and awesome present. At first Tom seems only old and jaded. He has a rare medical condition in which he ages slower than the rest of humanity, so at forty, in regular years he’s hundreds of years old. As we get more into his thoughts, though, we realize–and so does he–that he’s just stuck dwelling on time instead of enjoying it.

The book also involves a bit of intrigue. There’s a shadowy society protecting others who have this condition–think passing reference to X-Men–and a couple of tight moments that get resolved a little too easily, but the book isn’t so much about the plot as about Tom finally changing his thinking.

Imagine yourself now having whatever time you think you have left, and being afraid to ask that person out or jump into a relationship or really get to know your kids, grandparents, friends, etc., because there just isn’t enough time. Or you’re afraid you’ll spend too much time with them, get attached, and fall to pieces if you ever lose anyone of them. Now magnify that fear across hundreds of years. How do people ever overcome this fear? Using the only way they can overcome it, like the way Tom overcomes it: Love. He falls in love, he finds someone who loves him back. It’s really not that complicated, but people live their whole lives standing on the brink of happiness and never, ever jumping. They have not learned how to trust the power of love.

Aside from the musings on life, time, love, etc., as an avid English reader and writer, I love the nods to Shakespeare, Fitzgerald, and the like. It makes me feel proud to be a part of this heritage, this heritage of speaking, reading, and writing English. I can speak a smattering of words and phrases in other languages, but even if I was fluent in them, they wouldn’t be my heritage.

Okay, back to love. How, you are asking me. How exactly does this stop time, Pixie? Think of the best times of your lives. You’re at your brother’s wedding, you’re hanging out with your friends, you’re babysitting your grandkids and laughing up a storm with them. You’re at a funeral, but there’s so many friends and family to see and talk to and catch up with. You’re staring into your darling’s sparkling eyes. At those times, in those moments, is it not as if TIME itself does not exist? God is LOVE and love is outside of time.

In How to Stop Time, Tom learns to enjoy the present of his days and to stop worrying over the past and the future. He learns to to put the guilt aside and marvel in the moment. He learns that the risk is worth it and he can finally let go of the albatross hanging around his neck that is telling him that falling in love is a waste of time. I felt bad for him. The guy was essentially stuck in a Groundhog Day (and if you don’t know what that is, I suggest you watch the movie, starring Bill Murray, immediately.)

In reading the book, it’s impossible not to start thinking about time and how we spend our time. Most of my best times are spent with my family, friends, and fellow Christians, and I know that people are really the only things we can take with us to heaven, and that God has put us all together on this rock to be blessings for each other and to love each other. Everything else becomes so unimportant in comparison.

At the beginning of time, humans did live for hundreds of years and they probably got as downhearted and depressed as Tom did, but unlike Tom, they had a Creator and Savior who loves them to look to for comfort and strength. And I think that’s why some leap so easily into love instead of dithering on the precipice. They know that even if their fellow humans fail them, God never will. Some days I think my faith is that strong, other days not so much. Sometimes I think about what it would be like to live forever and with a start have to remember I will live forever, just in a new heaven and a new earth. Jesus’s love made it possible. Anyway, I don’t want to get too religious about it, but that’s what I thought of at the end. I will live forever in love and with those that I love. It’s pretty amazing. It’s like having a secret super power.