The Measure

This book has dramatically altered the way I look at the longevity of people's lives and has made me rethink how life is to be lived in such a profound way that I was not expecting a novel to do.

The measure is a beautiful, scary in some ways, story of how these boxes with strings in it appear in the world and some are long and some are short which ties in conjunction with the lifespan of the individual who got them. And this brings so many questions about how society should respond to this when finding out you either have a short string or a long string and what your loved one has and kind of makes you reconsider everything you knew because you might not have as much time as you thought left.

It really does show just how easy society can be pulled apart by certain things like being that this book is relatively new I think it definitely draws parallel almost to political stances but in a much deeper way like finding out that you're short string people assumed that you were reckless whereas if you were long string people just tried everything because they knew they wouldn't pass away yet it wasn't their time they still had a lot longer to live.

It created this separation also with relationships because if you were someone with a long string and you're with someone with a short string like what were you to do are you going to stay with them knowing that their time with you is shorter than what you thought and that they will pass before you like what do you do. And it calls into question what type of person you are because will you still love this person knowing that they only may have 10-15 years left with you.

It really showcases at least in this novel just a great parallel to the world and how the world works when something like this happens because of course there's a segregation between the two. And you think that's all that there really is but then you realize as the book is telling its story that short string people are the ones who allow most of the time these people with longer strings to continue to live so they're not as useless as the society and the book makes it seem.

It becomes really beautiful too because then as the book goes you start to draw parallels with your own life and the people you have lost in your life and those you might have thought you lost too soon it makes you realize that you didn't lose them too soon they lived their life to the absolute fullest that their life was supposed to be lived and that was just their time. So it really is a beautiful way of dealing with grief in that you know that they've made their mark just sooner than anyone else thought they were going to and that's what the book is about it's showing us that death is quite sad still of course but there is now a sense understanding and almost relief when it said how the strings didn’t mean you die early, it meant you lived your life to the fullest in a shorter time was great.

Though it is a work of fiction it's almost a self-help book in a way because as you lose someone you think ohh their time was cut short especially if they pass away young. But now after reading this, it's kind of a different outlook that I've now had with it where their time wasn't short just because they passed away young, they did everything that they were supposed to do and found who they were in a much shorter time and in a sense that's a very beautiful powerful thing.