Bahagia.

Assalamualaikum..

Baru selesai membaca novel tulisan Jodi Picoult, ’Nineteen Minutes’. Buku ke 3 beliau dalam koleksi saya. Juga buku ke 2 selepas ‘Twilight – Eclipse’ berjaya dihabiskan setelah hampir 6 bulan pulang ke tanah air. Berazam walau sesibuk mana pun, tidak mahu tergolong dalam kajian yang mengatakan rakyat Malaysia secara purata hanya membaca 2 muka surat bahan bacaan dalam satu tahun. It’s terrible fact right? Yet, it’s true. Luckily, I love reading. Old habit die hard, aren’t they?

As usual, Jodi Picoult loves to use teenager as the main character. And it is always family-centered. And somehow she managed to describe all characters, awesomely. And i love to be ‘dragged off’ as the story went further and deeper. Because the ending was always unexpected or turn to be the other way around. Fascinating though.

Ada certain issues yang saya rasa agak sensitive terutama bila melibatkan pandangan org luar terhadap Islam. Not proud (it calls riya’ isn’t it?), but I’m totally grateful to be born or even died as a Muslim. InsyaAllah.

Well, this story was about a junior high school student who was being bullied for entire time during his school time. After 12 years, he exploded. By killing 10 people in his high school. His revenge made him a murderer. Not only the whole town, but his own parents become traumatized. Shocked. Did not know, in what way, how their child turned to be a monster. And the ending was very unexpected. Well, mahu tahu lebih lanjut, harus beli sendiri bukunye.

Tapi salah satu perkara yang saya dapat, ialah how to measure happiness. Actually, there is a mathematical formula for a happiness.

"Mathematical formula for happiness: R/E; Reality divided by Expectations. There were 2 ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations.”

“Everyone know that if you divided Reality by Expectation, you got a happiness quotient. But when you inverted the equation - Expectation divided by Reality - you didnt get the opposite of happiness. What you got, was hope.”

“Pure logic: Assuming Reality was constant, Expectation had to be greater that Reality to create optimism. On the other hand, a pessimist was someone with Expectations lower than Reality.”

Menarik kan? Suka. Walaupun bahagia itu takkan dapat diukur dan berbeza mengikut siapa, di mana dan mengapa, it just nice to know that somehow it did countable.