“My father had faith that everything happens for a reason, so I’m choosing to trust that this is the best time for his story to make its way out into the world,” Myra Goodman says in the epilogue of this book.
Quest For Eternal Sunshine is the story of Mendek Rubin, a son, a father, a loving husband, the survivor of the Holocaust, and an amazing inventor. Stories about the Holocaust always captivate me because it is a time that I’ve learned a lot about in history books. It is only recently that I have become exposed to the real-world experience of people who lived through it. This is why I decided to pick up this book to learn more.
This book did come to me at an important time because some of the questions that Mendek explores are questions that I have started to have, such as what it is to have happiness, how can one confront the fears that they have been suppressing, and how to just live in the moment.
The story is written in short essays that flow together, which are divided into four parts based on Mendek’s journey in life. His words conjured beautiful images in my mind of his hometown and the visuals he used to help himself later in life. This is an insightful book and I would highly recommend it to anyone who has pondered big questions in life. There aren’t detailed accounts of the Holocaust and what happened to Mendek in the concentration camps and as surprised as I was for the lack of those details, I actually appreciated how the book focused on his life as a whole and how WWII made him who is was.
Themes for Thought
On Education
When I was student teaching during my placements, mindfulness was something I tried to incorporate at the beginning of my lessons. I used to do Meddy Teddy Tuesdays with my Grade 7’s and as fun as it was for a little bit, the curriculum took over and I used it less and less. Only recently, I have started thinking more about it and how to incorporate it in my daily life. It was quite reassuring to see how helpful mindfulness and meditation were for Mendek in the later half of his life. In a recent conversation with my friend, we wondered why we don’t take out time for mindfulness and meditation in school when ultimately, later in life, like in earlier 20’s, they come in really handy to get to know ourselves better.
Through mindfulness we learn to listen to ourselves. Through mindfulness, we understand our thoughts and belief systems and we start to understand that happiness ultimately comes from within. It took Mendek many years to implement this lesson and the fact that he is able to articulate it in this book in a succinct manner was an important takeaway for me.
On Imagination
Last year I read another book by She Writes Press called When a Toy Dog Became a Wolf and the Moon Broke Curfew by Hendrika de Vries. This was a book by World War II survivor named Henny, who lived in the Netherlands during the war. In the book, Henny is in her early teens and actively uses her imagination to survive the war. Mendek himself is big on using imagination and it was quite neat to see it used as a tool in Quest for Eternal Sunshine by an older man with similar roots. Imagination is powerful and Mendek reminded me of the powers of my mind.
On Learning
I feel that we come to our adulthood with the assumption that as we get older, things will settle down. That we will know what to do and have answers to all the questions that are put in front of us. However, I learned from Mendek that even as we grow older, we still continue to learn. We come to better terms with the image that we project to the rest of the world and how we truly see ourselves. Mendek takes the steps he needs to work with his fears and assumptions, and that effort to know himself better and unravel who he is, is something that continues as he gets older. Sometimes he had the tools to do those things and other times, he was able to turn to books and inspirational speakers to help him. Other times, he just had to look inside and make peace with the things that happen and accept himself.
Conclusion
Quest For Eternal Sunshine is a beautiful journey about life, about learning as we get older, facing challenges head-on, and learning from every single experience that has ever happened to us. It is about not having regrets and taking everything in stride and always knowing that at the core of all our relationships and everything that we do and everything that matters is love—love for our family and love for the world that we have been born into, as merciless as it feels sometimes. There’s a lot of wrong that has happened in the past but one cannot keep holding onto it. Ultimately, the way to happiness is to move on. The way to eternal sunshine is to look within and become one’s own best friend. I learned all of this from Mendek.
I am thankful to the publisher and The Nerd Daily for making this book available to me as an advanced reader copy. It has been a pleasure to be a part of Mendek’s journey and learn from him.
Quest For Eternal Sunshine is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers as of April 14th 2020.
Will you be picking up Quest For Eternal Sunshine? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis | Goodreads
Quest for Eternal Sunshine chronicles the triumphant, true story of Mendek Rubin, a brilliant inventor who overcame both the trauma of the Holocaust and decades of unrelenting depression to live a life of deep peace and boundless joy.
Born into a Hassidic Jewish family in Poland in 1924, Mendek grew up surrounded by extreme anti-Semitism. Armed with an ingenious mind, he survived three horrific years in Nazi slave-labor concentration camps while virtually his entire family was murdered in Auschwitz. After arriving in America in 1946—despite having no money or professional skills—his inventions helped revolutionize both the jewelry and packaged-salad industries. Remarkably, Mendek also applied his ingenuity to his own psyche, developing innovative ways to heal his heart and end his emotional suffering.
After Mendek died in 2012, his daughter, Myra Goodman, found an unfinished manuscript in which he’d revealed the intimate details of his healing journey. Quest for Eternal Sunshine—the extraordinary result of a posthumous father-daughter collaboration—tells Mendek’s whole story and is filled with eye-opening revelations, effective self-healing techniques, and profound wisdom that have the power to transform the way we live our lives.
Kriti, your beautiful review of Quest showed up in my Google Alert this morning. I just want to let you know how moved I was by it. As Mendek’s daughter and co-author, I know your appreciation of his life and wisdom would have made him very happy. I’m so glad the book resonated with you. With gratitude and best wishes always!
I am so glad, Myra! Thank you so much for sharing your father’s journey with me. I hope it resonates with readers as much as it resonated with me. 🙂