Flipped: Lessons and Realizations Essential to Life

A thing or two that people remember even in their youngest days are childhood crushes. These crushes remind memories that make each childhood the best. One book that would remind this feeling is “Flipped”. Written by Wendelin Van Draanen, Flipped is about a girl named Juli who falls in love with Bryce. Juli is bright, positive and outgoing while on the other hand, Bryce is timid and quiet. These differences hindered them from having a mutual friendship. With a book that has taught a lot of lessons, it is a masterpiece that resembles one’s life through the years growing up and takes its readers to a journey of lessons and realizations essential to life.

Everything that people do in life has a purpose. A purpose for the choices. Wendelin Van Draanen also had a purpose to write this book. According to Wendelin, most people didn’t learn how to look beneath the surface too late in life (Van Draanen, 2012). Her experiences pushed her to write a book about what she experienced during her childhood. How she developed an ability to see people as for who they are rather than what they look like. It is a book true to reality. Many of the people living in the 21st century are too eager to fall in love at a young age, yet not mature enough to handle the challenges it brings. Just like Juli, being to eager to have a relationship with Bryce, she ended up hurting herself. Acting too careless, her decisions in life were too impulsive and Bryce became a distraction to her.

Flipped is a book Wendelin wrote to inspire the readers to look beneath the surface, to look beyond what you see in the person, not the physical attributes because those are temporary. It’s the feelings that count. Aside from looking beneath the surface, another lesson that Flipped has is how we should find beauty in unexpected places. In the beginning, Bryce was fond of picking on the Sycamore tree Juli loved. She described it as a very beautiful tree. But for Bryce, all he saw was pure ugliness. Nothing to even be proud of. With his reaction, all that Juli can say was “You’re just visually challenged. I feel sorry for you.” Bryce being visually challenged is a perfect example of how people should see things in a different perspective. Just like how we deal with the situations we tackle in daily life. Learning how to deal with the most unpleasant situations and turning it into a good one. Small details in situations like these bring out the best in the worst. Aside from being visually challenged, Bryce didn’t value things given to him. An example of this is the eggs that Juli produced from her chickens. The eggs that Bryce threw away because he thinks he might get salmonella. Similar to the things handed to us, thinking that it is too hard or beyond our capabilities, the automatic decision will always be giving up or throwing away the chances of doing something great.

Another lesson taught by Wendelin is defying the norms of love. The current situation nowadays is the mindset that boys can only be the ones to court. It is shameful to be the one to court a guy. This mindset is the reason why a lot are afraid to love, afraid to take chances because of the thought of being judged by society. The feelings of girls are disregarded because it isn’t common to pave the path for a relationship. However, Juli didn’t care about the comment of others. All she could care about was pursuing her childhood crush until she matured. From the very start, Bryce was hers to achieve. No teasing or jokes could stop her from pursuing the guy her eyes laid on. In a matter of time, she knew all would fall into place. Although a question still remains, did Juli love Bryce or was it admiration?

There’s a fine line between love and admiration. Love is falling for someone without knowing the reason why, while on the other hand, admiration is falling for someone with specific reasons. In the beginning of the book, it was mentioned from the very start that Juli only fell for Bryce’s physical attributes. She fell for a boy who was handsome and charming yet disregarded all her efforts, talked trash about her and as she fell deeper, she realized that it was pure admiration. It was a mistake to fall for boy who disregarded her and never recognized her efforts. Whereas for Bryce, he proved that people really do have realizations for the most important things when it is too late. He is the embodiment of a lover who only recognizes his feelings when its too late. For a girl who is now in love with boy who cares for her and shows gratitude for all the efforts she has made.

Despite all the things that happened to Juli’s life, she still remained positive and didn’t let this hinder her from bringing out the best in life. Besides the fact that Bryce hurt her because of her carelessness, Bryce gave signs from the very start that Juli shouldn’t like a guy like him. Yet Juli didn’t listen leading to all of this. Because of her foolish act, she became a joke to everyone in school. However, things flip as Bryce falls for Juli while Juli is starting to hate Bryce. In attempt to say sorry, he plants a sycamore tree. The tree that has sentimental value to Juli. The tree that made her realize that Bryce was nothing but a worthless boy with good looks. With this small act of Bryce, slowly but surely, Juli was starting to open up again. Willing to talk again to the guy who made her childhood memorable. Things weren’t easy for Juli but with guidance of the people surrounding her, she was able to handle of these. In like manner, these experiences that people face everyday are part of life. These are the things that make all stronger. Much braver to conquer all the things life will hand.