The Privilege of Being Able to Choose - A Breaking Night by Liz Murray book review

Realize it or not, in this life, we always have the power to choose which path we want to live in. I realized that for the very first time by looking at this picture on Twitter 4 years ago. 

This picture simply told me we can choose what we want to see in our life but not so many people are aware with this privilege. Some of them are saying “I can’t change that, it is my destiny already”. Since I am majoring International Relations, I studied a subject called ‘Foreign Policy’. In this subject, my lecturer told me that even when a country choose to not choosing any sides, not producing any policies, or just being silent on certain issues in international relations realm, it is counted as a foreign policy of a country because it is impacted the country position and situation and it is counted as a decision. Then back to our human life, when we think it is already our destiny, it means that we decide to not doing anything about it over choosing another actual possible path.

This book by Liz Murray titled Breaking Night is teaching us about this privilege of able to choose that she just found out after years living a very low living standard. I was interested to read this because its real story about a struggle of a girl till She was accepted as Harvard University student (hopefully I can be Harvard student someday). The book contains of 512 pages, yet I finished it very quick because of its interesting and lively story. I mesmerized by the details written in this book but somehow, they are too much until one moment when I am questioning why only bad events here (yeah even though that’s the truth yet I am tired reading it at some points). In addition, the writer only tells Liz Murray’s Harvard life in one last chapter, whilst I really want to know more about that part hehe. Maybe yeah, the focus of the book is to tell the story before being accepted in Harvard University. There are so many moral values we can take from this book that I believe is relatable with our lives too.

Liz Murray’s key to success is her persistence, determination and discipline attitudes towards her goals. I really can feel how hard it was for her to focus on her education while her surroundings and environment were not supportive. This makes me think that We should never complain about how not supportive our environment or surroundings are because the decision is always on us whenever wherever we are. She emphasized the reason she finally went for education is she really wanted to have options for her life which she thought impossible to have options because of the situation She had since born. She actually chose and had options, but she did not realize it until she decided to continue her education that later became a turning point in her life.

I recommend this book for us, human being on whatever stage we are now, please remember that we have the power to choose our life’s path and We should utilize that privilege to live our life to the fullest, achieve our goals, being happy and grateful. Look beyond what's in front of us, there must be something else.

Happy reading!