“Tuesdays with Morrie”

May 4, 2006

Just finished reading “Tuesdays with Morrie” again. Yup, you’ve read it right: AGAIN. I have read it for I don’t know how many times already. It’s the only book so far which can make me cry (read: shed buckets of tears). It is a true story, a very touching one, of Mitch Albom, a sportswriter and his relationship with his college mentor, Morrie Schwartz.

When Mitch saw Morrie in a TV show talking about what it was like to die from Lou Gehrig’s disease, he called up Morrie and began a series of Tuesday visits. The book gives details of those visits. Morrie gives his reflection about many things in life: love, marriage, children, work, and aging among others. From the eyes of a very wise old man who is down to his last days, Mitch saw the real meaning of life.

I decided to buy the book from National Bookstore (plugging he he he he) after my favorite Oprah Winfrey endorsed it in her show.

Here are some of of my favorite lines from the book:

**Take my condition. The things I am supposed to be embarrassed about now — not being able to walk, not being able to wipe my ass, waking up some mornings wanting to cry — there is nothing innately embarrassing about them. It’s the same for women not being thin enough, or men not being rich enough. It’s just what our culture would have you believe. Don’t believe it.

**You see, . . . you closed your eyes. That was the difference. Sometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too — even when you’re in the dark. Even when you’re falling.

**As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed as ignorant as you were at twenty-two, you’d always be twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It’s growth. It’s more than the negative that you’re going to die, it’s the positive that you understand you’re going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.

**The truth is . . . once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.

Here’s an excerpt from the book:

“The last class of my old professor’s life took place once a week in his house, by a window in the study where he could watch a small hibiscus plant shed its pink leaves. The class met on Tuesdays. It began after breakfast. The subject was The Meaning of Life. It was taught from experience.

No grades were given, but there were oral exams each week. You were expected to pose questions of your own. You were also required to perform physical tasks now and then, such as lifting the professor’s head to a comfortable spot in the pillow or placing his glasses on the bridge of his nose. Kissing him good-bye earned you extra credit.

No books were required, yet many topics were covered including love, work, community, family, aging, forgiveness, and, finally, death. The last lecture was brief, only a few words.

A funeral was held in lieu of graduation. Although no final exam was given, you were expected to produce one long paper on what was learned. That paper was presented here.

The last class of my old professor’s life had only one student.

I was the student.”