Tuesdays with Morrie

by Mitch Albom

Shouldn’t the world stop? Don’t they know what has happened to me? But the world did not stop, it took no notice at all,

Do I wither up and disappear, or do I make the best of my time left?

He would not wither. He would not be ashamed of dying.

Instead, he would make death his final project, the center point of his days. Since everyone was going to die, he could be of great value, right? He could be research. A human textbook. Study me in my slow and...

Morrie would walk that final bridge between life and death, a...

He was intent on proving that the word “dying” was not synonymous with “useless.”

“Accept what you are able to do and what you are not able to do”; “Accept the past as past, without denying it or discarding it”; “Learn to forgive yourself and to forgive others”; “Don’t assume that it’s too late to get involved.”

‘Am I going to withdraw from the world, like most people do, or am I going to live?’ I decided I’m going to live—or at least try to live—the way I want, with dignity, with courage, with humor, with composure.

“There are some mornings when I cry and cry and mourn for myself. Some mornings, I’m so angry and bitter. But it doesn’t last too long. Then I get up and say, ‘I want to live ...’

“People see me as a bridge. I’m not as alive as I used to be, but I’m not yet dead. I’m sort of ... in-between.” He coughed, then regained his smile. “I’m on the last great journey here—and people want me to tell them what to pack.”

“Love wins. Love always wins.”

“The culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn’t work, don’t buy it.”

“So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important. This is because they’re chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.”

Maybe death is the great equalizer, the one big thing that can finally make strangers shed a tear for one another.

“The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.”

“Let it come in. We think we don’t deserve love, we think if we let it in we’ll become too soft. But a wise man named Levine said it right. He said, ‘Love is the only rational act.’ ”

Why are we embarrassed by silence? What comfort do we find in all the noise?

“Sometimes, in the mornings,” he said. “That’s when I mourn. I feel around my body, I move my fingers and my hands—whatever I can still move—and I mourn what I’ve lost. I mourn the slow, insidious way in which I’m dying. But then I stop mourning.”

I don’t allow myself any more self-pity than that. A little each morning, a few tears, and that’s all.”

How useful it would be to put a daily limit on self-pity. Just a few tearful minutes, then on with the day. And

Sometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too—even when you’re in the dark. Even when you’re falling.”

“I want someone to hear my story. Will you?”

And I suppose tapes, like photographs and videos, are a desperate attempt to steal something from death’s suitcase.

“the culture doesn’t encourage you to think about such things until you’re about to die. We’re so wrapped up with egotistical things, career, family, having enough money, meeting the mortgage, getting a new car, fixing the radiator when it breaks—we’re involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going. So we don’t get into the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying, Is this all? Is this all I want? Is something missing?”

Do you take care of others or take care of your “inner child”?

He was standing on the tracks, listening to death’s locomotive whistle, and he was very clear about the important things in life.

“Morrie,” Koppel said, “that was seventy years ago your mother died. The pain still goes on?” “You bet,” Morrie whispered.

“What will you do without your mother? What will become of you?”

In his mind he believed he could make the illness go away by ignoring it. How else can a child confront death?

“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”

“Everyone knows they’re going to die,” he said again, “but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently.”

To know you’re going to die, and to be prepared for it at any time. That’s better. That way you can actually be more involved in your life while you’re living.”

“Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.”

Why is it so hard to think about dying? “Because,” Morrie continued, “most of us all walk around as if we’re sleepwalking. We really don’t experience the world fully, because we’re half-asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do.” And facing death changes all that? “Oh, yes. You strip away all that stuff and you focus on the essentials. When you realize you are going to die, you see everything much differently. He sighed. “Learn how to die, and you learn how to live.”

The slightest human contact was immediate joy.

We are too involved in materialistic things, and they don’t satisfy us. The loving relationships we have, the universe around us, we take these things for granted.”

“You see that? You can go out there, outside, anytime. You can run up and down the block and go crazy. I can’t do that. I can’t go out. I can’t run. I can’t be out there without fear of getting sick. But you know what? I appreciate that window more than you do.” Appreciate it? “Yes. I look out that window every day. I notice the change in the trees, how strong the wind is blowing. It’s as if I can see time actually passing through that window-pane. Because I know my time is almost done, I am drawn to nature like I’m seeing it for the first time.”

“The fact is, there is no foundation, no secure ground, upon which people may stand today if it isn’t the family.

If you don’t have the support and love and caring and concern that you get from a family, you don’t have much at all.

“Love each other or perish,” Morrie said. “It’s good, no? And it’s so true. Without love, we are birds with broken wings.

It’s what I missed so much when my mother died—what I call your ‘spiritual security’—knowing that your family will be there watching out for you. Nothing else will give you that. Not money. Not fame.”

If you want the experience of having complete responsibility for another human being, and to learn how to love and bond in the deepest way, then you should have children.”

Don’t cling to things, because everything is impermanent.”

But detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That’s how you are able to leave it.”

“Take any emotion—love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I’m going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions—if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them—you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid. You’re afraid of the pain, you’re afraid of the grief. You’re afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails. “But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, ‘All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment.’ ”

Turn on the faucet. Wash yourself with the emotion. It won’t hurt you. It will only help. If you let the fear inside, if you pull it on like a familiar shirt, then you can say to yourself, “All right, it’s just fear, I don’t have to let it control me. I see it for what it is.”

Same for loneliness: you let go, let the tears flow, feel it completely—but eventually be able to say, “All right, that was my moment with loneliness. I’m not afraid of feeling lonely, but now I’m going to put that loneliness aside and know that there are other emotions in the world, and I’m going to experience them as well.”

“I don’t want to leave the world in a state of fright. I want to know what’s happening, accept it, get to a peaceful place, and let go. Do you understand?”

“The truth is, when our mothers held us, rocked us, stroked our heads—none of us ever got enough of that. We all yearn in some way to return to those days when we were completely taken care of—unconditional love, unconditional attention. Most of us didn’t get enough.

the young are not wise. They have very little understanding about life. Who wants to live every day when you don’t know what’s going on? When people are manipulating you, telling you to buy this perfume and you’ll be beautiful, or this pair of jeans and you’ll be sexy—and you believe them! It’s such nonsense.”