It's not love, heartbreak, or disappointment that kills us in the end, it's the fear of being hurt that stops us from doing anything at all.
Very rarely in a book do you find a truth so strong that you have to stop reading just to comprehend the full meaning in its entirety. In Nicola Yoon’s “Everything, Everything” I literally had to stop everything.
The delicate story touches on what its like to desire better; to seek greater adventure from this life than what we are initially given.
It focuses on that longing that hits us, that feeling of wanting more.
The story takes readers on a heart-throbbing journey of teens, just like us, falling in love, experiencing the wonders of the world for the first time, and discovering the deeper meaning of life.
The novel stars Madeline Whittier, an 18-year-old home schooled girl with SCID, or severe combined immunodeficiency, which causes her to be allergic to the outside world around her. She has always been comfortable as a "princess stuck in her glass castle house," until she meets the spontaneous and exhilarating boy next door-- Olly.
She finds herself falling uncontrollably for Olly, and suddenly, the plain white walls of her bedroom are just not enough as she realizes, for the first time, that she wants to experience the vibrant colors of the world.
And just like that, Madeline has chosen to live.
The story and characters resonated with me so deeply that it seems nearly impossible not to bleed all my thoughts into writing about the many ways this one book has affected me, and so many others, on such a personal level.
Just like Madeline, I learned that just because you can’t experience everything the world has to offer, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t experience anything at all. It shows us that life is unpredictable, that we can still do everything right, and that people and things can still be screwed up, but that its beautiful anyways because sometimes it takes the screw-ups to comprehend the true value of living.
Before reading Nicola’s beautiful story, I didn’t understand what it actually meant be in the present tense of “living.”
Actually, truly, living.
Because sometimes breathing and existing means experiencing the good and the inevitably bad, and “sometimes you do things for the right reasons and sometimes for the wrong ones and sometimes it’s impossible to tell the difference.”
And sometimes, its those perfect and disappointing decisions that make us realize what a fascinating gift life really is.
“Everything, Everything,” is the only story I have ever read that shows us that its our job as readers to wonder the world, to fall in love, to chase after the dreams we crave and to never, ever settle for anything less.
In the book it says, "In the beginning there was nothing. And then there was everything." Its not about what we don't have, its about what in this life we are willing to fight for.
This story is so important in the way that the words practically save us, the simple yet complex story on only a thin page gives us the perpetual hope that once seemed utterly nonexistent.
Above all else, the story teaches us that love and life and adventure are risky, but everything is risky, even doing absolutely nothing at all.
We are only given one life, and its our choice whether to make it a good or a bad one.
So thank you Nicola, for teaching us that life and love, above all else, is worth everything, everything.
