Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder

This book is truly something. Paul Farmer, raised without the ideals of the American dream, is one of the very few people in this world and mostly in this country, who truly cares about the world and is actively trying to make it a better place. Here is a man who will risk his life to do justice to a people whose livelihood America completely destroyed.  Farmer doesn’t care about anything but humanity, and helping it in this helter-skelter world.  

I think if you asked Kidder, in an elevator to sum up the book, you’d probably get an earful and end up at a diner drinking coffees and discussing a whole slew of practices of today’s world that are truly horrifying. But here it is not really Kidder who struck my sever intrigue, but Farmer, whom I’d love to sit down and talk with. His interesting and uncommon childhood made him a particularly wonderful man.

“As Farmer was leaving the shelter he heard Joe say to another resident just loudly enough to make Farmer wonder if Joe meant for him to overhear, ‘That guys a fuckin’ saint’ it wasn’t the first time that Farmer had heard himself called that, when I asked him his reaction he said…’I don’t care how often people say you’re a saint, its to that I mind it, its that its inaccurate’ this was seemly I thought, resisting the edification. But then he told me’ people call me a saint, and than I think, I have to work harder, because a saint would be a great thing to be.’ I felt a small inner disturbance. It wasn’t that the words seemed immodest, I felt I was in the presence of a different person from the one id been chatting with a moment ago. Someone whose ambitions I hadn't yet begun to fathom.”

I think this book spoke to me so much because it’s exactly the kind of thing I want to do with my life. I want to be a writer, but above that I want to be like Farmer. He had great opportunities in his life and he saw great injustices across the world. He used his privilege to help people of Haiti who are completely un-self-sufficient because of things America did for its greed. He gave people there a second chance and a new life and he did it with great sacrifices on his own part, because he understands that that’s what it takes to make a difference. He didn’t do it for monetary gain; he did it for universal gain, and knowledge and wisdom. I don’t know about being a doctor, and saving people everywhere, but I want to do something like that for the earth. An earth mostly destroyed by America, that we are all part of, and that by poisoning and killing our planet we in affect are doing just that to ourselves. You cant save people in a world that is dying.