Insight = Truth

Honestly, it has been a long time since I read a book. And thanks to Mansi for gifting me one. I don’t read much. I think I must have read around 10 books till date. I regret not reading more.

I just finished reading “The Long Way Down” by Nick Hornby and it was a treat. It is a lightly written, funny tale of four eccentric people trying to commit suicide. What amused me the most was the way they approached death. These four people, at the boulevard of failure, realize their life has nothing to offer to them. They decide to end their misery by jumping off the roof of what is called ‘the toppers house’, a suicide joint, on a new year’s night.

As the night unfolds, they argue and fight over things, and find themselves down on the street, the long way down – the stairs. This happens again a couple times, and one day they experience death through their eyes. They find themselves on the roof with a man who is ready to push himself down, and he does. They saw truth. They saw how cruel death was. Until then they hadn’t realized what they were up to and decided they weren’t ready for it.

Often times we think we can do something, or we are doing something that’s right. If only we could see someone else doing it right, we realize we were wrong. However hard you try to think of solution to a problem, you would probably end up with something that might not be the right one. This is even so true for us as strategic planners in advertising. To approach a problem or an issue you need to live life like the person who has the problem. Do as he would do to solve it. That’s when you find the truth, the reality, more often what we call – an insight.