Tuesdays with Morrie — Mitch Albom
“Tuesdays with Morrie” is an outstanding memoir authored by Mitch Albom that touches the heart and provokes deep introspection. With its simple yet profound narrative, this emotional rollercoaster takes readers on a journey of self-discovery and meaningful connections. This is a short and sweet book. Once I started reading it, got hooked to it. Mitch has accomplished to capture the readers emotions by taking us along a beautiful journey of his mentor’s life which is embellished with love, morality and human values/relationships making you reflect on your own life. This is one of my favorite books.
This book is based on a true story of the author’s former college professor, Morrie Schwartz. who is diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), a degenerative and terminal disease. As Mitch graduates from college, gets busy with work and life. It has been sixteen years past his graduation and is shown a bit hesitant reaching out his former professor. With great courage, Mitch decides to meet Morrie one day. After their meeting, Morrie decides to impart his life’s wisdom and lessons to Albom during a series of Tuesday meetings as his disease progresses. These poignant gatherings transform into an intimate, life-changing experience for both men.
Morrie is an ideal teacher that we all dream to have. He exuded a calming aura, loved to dance, had positive attitude towards living a grateful life. His persona was uplifting throughout his battle with the fatal disease. Even as Morrie’s body was deteriorating, he always found the time and energy to teach Mitch few wonderful life lessons. Mitch travelled every Tuesday to provide Morrie with food, aid and, most importantly, company. This surely kept Morrie’s morale high. Mitch cherished all the time he spent listening to Morrie’s life’s lesson.
One strong reason that I was pulled towards this book is that it is deeply philosophical. I love to listen to others/elders and their experiences. I get overjoyed when I can relate my own experiences to the simple facts of life, and realize they are so much valuable than the worldly desires.
Throughout this book, Morrie touches few of the topics of “Feeling Sorry For Yourself,” “Love”, “Regrets,” “Death,” “Family,” “Emotions,” and “Forgiveness.”
All these topics are beautifully narrated by Morrie. One of my favorite topic was of family. Morrie explains the importance of love by mentioning a quote “Love each other or perish” from the poet W.H. Auden. I believe the whole purpose of our human life is love. Love the life you live. Knowing that you have people in your life who are there to protect you is more powerful than anything else. Love is the ultimate power which has great ability to heal, learn and respect. Any action we do, has the basis of love. When we seek to learn knowledge or pursue education, it is our inherent love towards acquiring the knowledge that drives us and gives the motivation to learn. Morrie says we should focus on love, family, and respect. This was a teaching for Mitch in a way where he was focused too much on work than his family.
Other interesting topic that Morrie brought up was of “Death”. Loved his perspective towards it as his health was in debilitating condition, but he never held back. He keeps moving forward and is not afraid of death. Morrie says to Mitch, “Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.” This brings in a profound reality of life. Unless you go through tough & extremely dire situations in life, one does not value of real meaning of life. And once that realization dawns upon you, then we start appreciating the small things in life and live every moment happily.
One more topic that moved me emotionally was the story of waves and oceans as Morrie mentioned. That story reminded me of the Ranveer A.’s podcast episode with Dr. Alok Sharma where he spoke about a reference saying — “Everything and nothing is same”. He stated a similar example where all things at fundamentals are the same. When you go down to nothing, you also see everything. For instance, an ocean is made of several water drops. Imagine, a water drop (in isolation) around this ocean. In this context, the water drop feels powerful as there is nothing surrounding it currently, hence t has its own identity. But the moment this water drop gets merged in the ocean, this drop becomes nothing as its not noticeable anymore. But at the same time, its also a part of the ocean, part of everything. Similarly in life, we always feel we are something (due to ego, special talent, great physical abilities etc.) but at the end when we are left with nothing, then we realize the golden truth that we belong to everything, which is humankind.
This is one book which I would love to come back and read it anytime when I get a chance. Morrie shares such important life enriching nuggets in this book which changes our perspectives towards leading a better life. Throughout the book, Morrie attests to the power of love and of the importance of giving over taking in life. Morrie believes that the more we do for others the better we feel.
At the end, I think in this way - “What would I be thinking when I am in my death bed?” or “What would I be called after my death?”
When you are breathing your last few breaths of life, or after your death, I would loved to be remembered for the values I lived for, cherished for, memories that I created in others life by helping them. And not be known for how long I worked for in any company/organization or for any of the worldly pleasures that I aspired for. If you change your perspective in such way, one will start thinking like Morrie.
