And The Mountains Echoed: 6 Life Lessons From Khaled Hosseini’s 3rd Book

“Words have the power to move the world” this phrase stands true for Khaled Hosseini’s books. After reading his first two masterpieces “The Kite Runner” and “A Thousand Splendid Suns” I was even more sure about the phrase. It is true for Khaled Hosseini in all senses.

Like his other books, this book, too, helped me learn many things. Today I thought I’ll share all those lessons with you all in the hope that these might help you too.

1. Helplessness can make us do things that we never thought we were capable of.

The core of the story revolves around the helplessness of people from different walks of life. It was devastating to read and think that in reality, people live where they frequently have to give up on things that are important for them, just because they lack resources or power. This book gave me a reality check of this world and its cruelty.

2. Stories work as our Best Teachers of Empathy.

Before reading Khaled Hosseini’s book, I didn’t know about Afghanistan and the agony of people living there. It is a place under the Taliban rule where people for so many years are just hoping to have peace. This book helped me empathize with the people still suffering.

I cried my heart out while reading it, and in the end, all I could say to myself was that if and when I would be capable, I will give my share to serve others. That’s what stories do to us. They help us learn and empathize. They make us more humane.

3. Not everyone can help genuinely. Many people feel bad about others’ situations, but they don’t do anything when it comes to action. That’s the difference between sympathy and empathy.

When it comes to all the bad things happening around us, there are three kinds of people,

• One who doesn’t know about what is happening.
• Second, who knows and give remarks on how miserable it is but do not take any action.
• And, third who have the guts to stand up and to help.

The majority of people lie under the second head, which is unfortunate for society as a whole. This book helped me understand that it is not something to be shocked by because people are selfish and ignorant in many ways. But still one should try, on their personal level, to fall in the third category.

4. Everyone has their way of loving. Just because someone doesn’t love you the way you want them to doesn’t mean that love doesn’t exist.

I guess we all know this, but accepting the same is kind of difficult for us as it means taking others for who they are and not expecting their actions to mould according to what we want. Many people lose their relations with their parents, siblings, cousins, lovers just because they have a rigid idea of how to love “should” be expressed. Instead, we need to think that love “can” be expressed in many ways, but, unfortunately, people realize it when there is no time left to be together.

5. Many people out there don’t have people who will cry for them when they are gone.

This book made me think about how we waste our time fighting and arguing with our loved ones when there are people who do not even have someone to share their meal with.

We, as humans, dwell most of our time on things that don’t matter. I am not saying that it is wrong to be sad about things that affect us. But my question is, why can’t we move on from things that make us miserable?

It is a human tendency to dive deep in pain, but we never try to feel with the same intensity when it comes to happiness. Are we so attached to pain, or are we afraid of change?

6. Selflessness helps us live a life free from regrets.

We should not let our selfish desires get in the way of love for the people we care about. It may seem like a clear choice from a third-person perspective, but the right choice is often harder to make when it comes down to it.

So, these were the 6 lessons I learned from the book, ‘And the mountains echoed’ The book is available on Amazon, you can grab it in case you haven’t read it yet. I have done a similar listicle on Khaled Hosseini’s ‘The Kite Runner‘ too. Give it a read if you have missed it. And keep checking our Literature section for more such interesting and helpful content.