Hello dear friends! How is The Yellow World going? And how are you all? I’m enjoying this book everyday more, and I’ll admit that I’m finally warming up to the author’s writing style. I got to page 143, as promised in my previous post, and I’m a bit upset I still haven’t found out what the ‘Yellow World’ is, or who the ‘yellows’ are… However, I am starting to have my own little vague idea, so I guess I’ll just have to keep reading to see if I am right. Below are the three questions I thought of for our new Q&A, I hope you’ll enjoy reading my answers, and will be sharing your own.
Questions:
- What piece of advice has Albert Espinosa given you, that you’ll be willing to apply to your daily life?
- What do you think the ‘Yellow World’ is? And who do you think the ‘yellows’ are?
- Has any of his ‘Discoveries’ opened your mind to something new you’ve never thought of before?
My answers:
- The piece of advice that I’ve immediately been willing to apply to my own life, is the one contained in the opening quote of the Tenth Discovery: ‘Albert, trust the person you used to be. Respect your past self ’. It is such a straightforward concept, however it often seems so foreign to us. Somehow we distrust the choices made by ‘our past selves’, believing ‘we’ (our present selves) would be so much better at making the right decisions. We tend to forget that ‘we’ are the results of all the choices we consciously and thoughtfully made in our past. We probably all spent days and hours pondering over life changing decisions, before making our tentative choices hoping for a happy future. We owe it to our past selves to acknowledge their effort to bring us where we are today. We might have made some mistakes in the past, and we might be making more in the future. But that is not the point we are discussing. Even if we believe ‘we’ might have better means today to make more informed decisions, we should not forget that this is thanks to our past selves’ choices. We learnt through ‘their’ trials and errors, and we should respect them for that.
- As I still haven’t reached the point in the book where this is explained to me, I’ll only be going by my ‘gut feeling’. From my understanding, the ‘yellows’ are those people you encounter in your life, which teach you a new way to approach the world. They might be siblings, parents, partners, lifelong friendships, strangers and people that only cross your life for a few days, but the main thing about them is not who they are, but what they do to you. They show you a new path into life, a new approach, a new direction, a new idea that will keep you thinking for the rest of your days. This constantly growing network of ‘yellows’, shapes the way you see the world, and intricately builds up your means to approach life and see things through these yellow filters. This will eventually lead you to see the world as a place full of ‘yellows’, a ‘Yellow World’ full of constant encounters, growth, exchange and support.
- Yes. Reading through the Seventeenth Discovery: ‘The power of contrasts’, has opened my eyes. It made me realize how much we underestimate those ‘little actions’, that could actually have a big impact on somebody else’s life. The quote that goes with the discovery is: ‘We’re not going to die of cancer; we’re going to die of boredom”. Espinosa describes in this chapter how much he would have liked his hospital to have chessboards, TVs, cards and board games to play with his fellow eggheads. But there weren’t any. This got me thinking how easy it could be to actually make a person smile, even if just for a few hours. Donating a chessboard, or a board game to a hospital, is such a ‘small action’ for us to do, but it could really make a difference in someone else’s day. The problem is…we don’t think about it, so we don’t do it. Espinosa’s book has got me thinking, so I’ll look out for these ‘little actions’, and I promise I’ll try my best to do anything it takes to follow through with them.
What are your answers for today’s Q&A? Please leave them in the comments below!
On the 28th of February I’ll be writing my conclusions to The Yellow World, and I’ll be announcing the date and time of my second Live Book Club Chat on Instagram.
Stay tuned for more!
Bye for now.
Love,
Elly XO
PS: you can get your copy of The Yellow World here.
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