Every Day by David Lethian

Every Day by David Levithan is a young adult novel that follows the life of an individual named A. A lives a very unique life because he or she wakes up each morning in a different body and experiences that person's life for the day. A is in control of the body he inhabits each day and uses "accessing" to determine information about them from their mind. To avoid being detected as an imposter by the persons family or friends, A uses context clues and acts in the way they think that person would act. A is not defined by a gender and spends some days in the body of a male and other days in the body of a female.  Because of this I am going to refer to A as them or their in this blog post. A is generally very respectful of the persons' life and tries not to disturb any part of it unless absolutely necessary. This often means that A attends the persons school, does their homework, participates in sports practices, and does anything that person would typically do. A only inhabits bodies around the their age and never spends more than one day in each body.

In my opinion, Every Day is a must read for teachers, future teachers, and adolescents. Due to the style of A's life, the novel provides windows and mirrors for almost any individual. Levithan does an amazing job describing the thoughts, actions, and feelings of different adolescents as they are going through this developmentally crucial time in their lives. For educators and students, this novel has the potential to provide compassion for different walks of life. For me, it has opened my eyes to the thought processes of different individuals. For example, one day A spends their time in the body of a severely depressed individual. This section of the book really gave me an understanding of how tragically difficult every second of life can be for one suffering depression, something I myself have never experienced.

While I think there are many valuable takeaways from this novel, the one I a going to focus on for this post is the awareness of the similarities we all share. Because A has experienced so many different families, schools, personalities, and ways of living, they have become extremely aware of how similar most peoples lives really are. Toward the beginning of the novel, A says that it is only because of these similarities that he or she is able to live in this way. A is able to go undetected by friends and family members, who know the individual being inhabited very well, with often less than them thinking the person is just in a strange mood that day. Some days A does not have to access any information and is still able to make it through the day as the individual. During his experiences, A has noticed that people generally focus only on the differences between them and other individuals and ignore these similarities. In my opinion, if more people were able to see these similarities it would result in a more empathetic, compassionate and understanding world. We would have the ability to avoid conflicts, fights, and disagreements. Or at the very least, have a better understanding of where the other person is coming from and why they might see something differently. I am very impressed by the amount of knowledge A has acquired living this way. While to took some getting used to as a kid, A is now so positive, understanding, supportive, and wants the best for each body they have spent time in. While it is impossible to live as A does ourselves, I hope that through reading this novel individuals can gain insight about the similarities that all humans share.