While reading Enrique’s journey, I found a couple ideas introduced in the book to be particularly captivating. Although I am sure that these couple ideas I was most interested in, were not the main focuses of the plot, by actively reading and making a continuous effort to fully understand the characters by putting myself in his or her position in the story, these few thing are what ended up impacting me the most. In the story, Enrique fully believes that reuniting with his mother is the only thing that will make him happy. This alone almost directly causes him most of the hardship he endures throughout his journey. I could relate to this. Not the specific events, but the overall belief that your happiness lies in someone else’s hands. I was able to see that this is not true. It can, and inevitably will, cause you to be disappointed. Enrique allowed himself to become incredibly unhappy. He puts himself in such life threatening situations just to fulfill this false perception of contentment that he has created in his own mind. After seeing the danger in allowing yourself to depend on others for joy, it provoked me to think deeper about the topic. I concluded that you have to teach yourself to be happy on your own. Not to wait on someone or something, not to tell yourself, “when I have this ill be happy.” In the end, you will be disappointed. True happiness comes from inside of you, and in my belief, from religious enlightenment. The other small thing that impacted me in a way I don’t think the author necessarily intended, was the schools and general way of life of the characters. I do of course think that the author of the book fully expected for these harsh environments described to make a certain reader slightly more appreciative of their surroundings, however, I’ve presumed that it personally had a much greater affect on me than that. The story mentions specifically, mothers feeding their children sugar water whenever t