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Foreword
This month's book was Tuesdays with Morrie. This is a biography. This is also one of my all-time favourite books. This book has a different kind of peace and calmness in it. The book's theme revolves around dealing with and getting to know death, and while learning how to live in a better and more lively way.
The protagonist of the book is Morrie Schwartz. He was a social psychology professor of the author, Mitch Albom. Morrie was a very fun-loving person. He would go out to church and other places to dance (he loved dancing!) He would go there and dance there on his own and dance. He was more than just a social psychology teacher, he was a life coach for his students. They referred to him as the best teacher they had ever had. They would graduate and still stay in contact with him.
The book begins with Morrie coming to know that he had contracted ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis). This is the same disease as the famous physicist Stephen Hawking had. This is a terminal disease which eats you from the inside. It begins at your feet, making your muscles useless and irresponsive. With time your muscles would stop working and the worse part is that you would be able to feel the pain in your muscles but you won't be able to move them. Most patients just have a year or two to live. And the cause of death is saddening and scary too. You suffocate to death because after a point your lungs would stop working and you won't be able to breathe.
Now, after getting to know that he just had a year or two left to live, Morrie had two choices. The first choice was that he could either wither around, be sad and cry about his misery, or the second choice was that he could make the best out of the remaining time he had. He chose the second. Everyone dies and he believed that he could use his slow and patient demise for something good by becoming a living book and helping people deal with death and making them love life a little more. He even started taking his last course 'Meaning of Life' with just one student, Mitch. They would meet every Tuesday (hence the name of the book) where they would talk about a lot of different things like love, family, money, etc. It was mostly Mitch asking questions and Morrie answering them. Over time Morrie's health deteriorated a lot. His muscles stopped working overtime. He started from not being able to hold a spoon properly while eating to going on a liquid diet, from walking using a stick to laying in the bed at the end. He also reached the stage where someone else had to wipe his bottom after he was done using the bathroom which he claimed is the ultimate stage of being dependent on someone else. When asked if he was ashamed that he is dependent on someone else. He said the culture and society say that he should be ashamed but instead he is enjoying it, for him, it's like he is a baby again and is being cared for.
Tension of Opposites
You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else. Some things hurt, yet you know they shouldn’t. You take certain things for granted, even when you should never take anything for granted in life.
You must understand this concept because once you do, you will understand life a little more and won't curse it when life is not going your way. One example of it can be, you going away from your home for a job. Now you might be someone who doesn't want to do that, you feel like not doing it but since it is important and for good, you do it.
Aim in Life
So many people roam around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they are busy doing things they think are important. This is because they are 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.
Once you have meaning in your life, you get a direction towards which you want to go. And once you start going in that direction, you fix other things on your way too. You fix your lifestyle, and your bad habits, adopt healthy things and start living a little happier than before.
Put a limit on your self-pity
Trust
Morrie used to do a fun trust testing activity with his college students called, trust fall. It is a fun thing you can do with your friends too. You form pairs and then one by one a person folds their hands and free falls on their back and their partner has to catch them before they fall to the ground. One time Morrie tried it, and no one in the class could successfully do it except for one girl. He tells her that she was able to do it because she closed her eyes. Sometimes you can't believe what you see. You need to close your eyes to truly believe in it.
Trust is an important thing it adds stability to your world. If you trust others and they trust you, things work smoothly when people have trust in each other.
A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
- Henry Adams
Death
Everyone knows they are going to die but nobody believes it. If we did we would do things differently. Because we all are sleepwalking. Automatically Doing things we are supposed to do half asleep. We are not living life to the fullest.
Everyone is just too busy doing other things that they never think about death. Which is why they are scared of it. If they spend time thinking about it and understanding that death is the only truth in this world they will be much more accepting and less scared of it. When we learn to make peace with death we finally learn how to live.
Family and Children
The fact is, there is no foundation, no secure ground, upon which people may stand today if it isn't the family. It's become quite clear to me as I've been sick. 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 is so supremely important. As our great poet Auden said, 'Love each other or perish.'
Having children is the best thing that can ever happen to a person. The feeling can never be substituted by a friend, a lover or anyone. The fact that there is always someone who is keeping an eye on you all the time is good. The feeling of having complete responsibility for someone.
Having a family that supports you, cares for you and looks after you is very important. They bring colours and joy to your life. They take care of you when you fall sick.
Detachment
But detachment doesn't mean you don't let the experience penetrate you. On contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That's how you are able to leave it. If you hold back on emotions if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them - you can never get to being detached, you are too busy being afraid. You are afraid of the pain, you are afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails.
Ageing
You need to embrace ageing. As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two you would be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Ageing is not just decay, it's growth. It's more than negative that you are going to die it's also positive that you understand you are going to die. And that you live a better life because of it.
Mitch: But if ageing was so valuable why do people keep saying I wish I was young again
Morrie: Unsatisfied lives. Lives without a meaning if they had found a meaning, they wouldn't want to go back you want to go forward with it.
Power and Money
People use money and power as a substitution for love. There's a big confusion among people about what they want and what they need. You need food. You don't need a chocolate sundae. You don't get satisfaction from things like cars, houses. You get satisfaction from offering what you have. You go to an elderly home and teach them something you know. You spend time with them.
If you show off to the people on the top, they will still look down on you. If you show off to the people on the bottom, they will envy you. The status will get you nowhere. Only open heart will allow you to float equally among everyone
Relationship
Morrie says he feels sorry for this generation. People are either too selfish to be in a loving relationship or in too much hurry that they marry someone and get divorced 6 months later. Friends are great but they are not going to be here on a night when you are coughing and can't sleep and someone has to sit up all night with you, comfort you, try to be helpful.
Marriage
If you don't respect the other person you are gonna have a lot of trouble. If you don't know how to compromise you are gonna have a lot of trouble. If you cant talk openly about what goes on between you, you are gonna have a lot of trouble. And if you don't have a common set of values in life you are gonna have a lot of trouble. Your values must be alike. And the biggest one of those values must be your belief in the importance of your marriage.
Forgiveness
First, forgive yourself before you die, then forgive others. It's not just others who we need to forgive, we also need to forgive ourselves. For all the things we didn't do. All the things we should have done. You can't get stuck on the regrets about what we should have done. That doesn't help you when you get to where I am.
Love
"As long as we can love each other, and remember the feeling of love we had, we can die without ever really going away. All the love you created is still there. All the memories are still there. You live on-in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here.”
Death ends a life not a relationship
In business, people negotiate to win. They negotiate to get what they want. Maybe you are too used to that. Love is different. Love is when you are as concerned about someone else's situation as you are about your own.
This was an amazing book. Reading it has such a calming effect. If you are in chaos. Read this book.
Although I have a mixed opinion about the book this is well-written vaibhav!!