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# 2020-08-24 - Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom
This book deals with profound topics such as how to be happy and how
to live well. I really enjoyed the deep philosophical discussions
held in plain speech without any jargon.
My copy is about 200 pages in a big font. I read it in one day.
I am surprised how many haters there are on Goodreads. I get the
feeling they would benefit from running the dialog through their
hearts as well as their heads.
# Chapter, The Curriculum
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 respond to questions, and you were expected to pose
questions of your own.
# Chapter, The Classroom
"Well, for one thing, the culture we have does not make people feel
good about themselves. We're teaching the wrong things. And you
have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't
buy it. Create your own. Most people can't do it."
# Chapter, Taking Attendance
"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."
Although the TV and radio work were nice supplements, the newspaper
had been my lifeline, my oxygen; when I saw my stories in print each
morning, I knew that, in at least one way, I was alive.
Now it was gone and as the strike continued... there were worried
phone calls and rumors that this would go on for months. Everything
I had known was upside down. I had grown used to thinking readers
somehow needed my column. I was stunned at how easily things went on
without me.
# Chapter, The First Tuesday
"The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love,
and let it come in."
But a wise man named Levine said it right. He said, "Love is the
only rational act."
# Chapter, The Third Tuesday
"Mitch," he said, "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 is
broken--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?"
He paused.
"You need someone to probe you in that direction. It won't just
happen automatically."
# Chapter, The Professor
When Morrie was a teenager, his father took him to a fur factory
where he worked. This was during the Depression. The idea was to
get Morrie a job. He entered the factory, and immediately felt as if
the walls had closed in around him. The room was dark and hot, the
windows covered with filth, and the machines were packed tightly
together, churning like train wheels. The fur hairs were flying,
creating a thickened air, and the workers, sewing the pelts together,
were bent over their needles as the boss marched up and down the
rows, screaming for them to go faster. Morrie could barely breathe.
He stood next to his father, frozen with fear, hoping the boss
wouldn't scream at him, too.
During the lunch break, his father took Morrie to the boss and pushed
him in front of him, asking if there was any work for his son. But
there was barely enough work for the adult laborers, and no one was
giving it up.
This, for Morrie, was a blessing. He hated the place. He made
another vow that he kept to the end of his life: he would never do
any work that exploited someone else, and he would never allow
himself to make money off the sweat of others.
# Chapter, The Fourth Tuesday
"Well, the truth is, if you really listen to that bird on your
shoulder, if you accept that you can die at any time--then you might
not be so ambitious as you are."
"The things you spend so much time on--all the work you do--might not
seem as important. You might have to make room for some more
spiritual things."
"Mitch," he said, laughing along, "even I don't know what 'spiritual
development' really means. But I do know we're deficient in some
way. We are too involved in the materialistic things, and they don't
satisfy us. The loving relationships we have, the universe around
us, we take these things for granted."
# Chapter, The Fifth Tuesday
"This is part of what family is about, not just love, but letting
others know there's someone who is watching out for them. Nothing
else will give you that. Not money. Not fame."
He shot me a look.
"Not work," he added.
# Chapter, The Sixth Tuesday
"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.'"
# Chapter, The Seventh Tuesday
"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."
Yes, I said, but if aging were so valuable, why do people always say,
"Oh, if I were young again."?
He smiled. "You know what that reflects? Unsatisfied lives.
Unfulfilled lives. Lives that haven't found meaning. Because if
you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You
want to go forward. You want to see more, do more. You can't
wait..."
"You have to find what's good and true and beautiful in your life as
it is now. Looking back makes you competitive. And, age is not a
competitive issue."
# Chapter, The Eighth Tuesday
"We've got a form of brainwashing going on in our country," Morrie
sighed. "Do you know how they brainwash people? They repeat
something over and over. And that's what we do in this country.
Owning things is good. More money is good. More property is good.
More commercialism is good. MORE IS GOOD. MORE IS GOOD. We repeat
it--and have it repeated to us, over and over until nobody bothers to
even think otherwise. The average person is so fogged up by all
this, he has no perspective on what's really important anymore."
"You can't substitute material things for love or for gentleness or
for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship."
"Do the kinds of things that come from the heart. When you do, you
won't be dissatisfied, you won't be envious, you won't be longing for
somebody else's things. On the contrary, you'll be overwhelmed with
what comes back."
# Chapter, The Tenth Tuesday
"Still," he said, "there are a few rules I know to be true about love
and marriage:
* If you don't respect the other person, you're gonna have a lot of
trouble.
* If you don't know how to compromise, you're gonna have a lot of
trouble.
* If you can't talk openly about what goes on between you, you're
gonna have a lot of trouble.
* If you don't have a common set of values in life, you're gonna
have a lot of trouble. Your values must be alike.
* The biggest value is your belief in the importance of your
marriage [or relationship].
# Chapter, The Eleventh Tuesday
"Here's what I mean by building your own little sub-culture," Morrie
said. "I don't mean you disregard every rule of your community. I
don't go around naked, for example. I don't run through red lights.
The little things, I can obey. But the big things--how we think, what
we value--those you must choose yourself. You can't let anyone--or
any society--determine those for you."
"Each society has its own problems," Morrie said, lifting his
eyebrows, the closest he could come to a shrug. "The way to do it, I
think, isn't to run away. You have to work at creating your own
culture."
"The problem, Mitch, is that we don't believe we are as much alike as
we are. If we saw each other as more alike, we might be very eager
to join in one big human family in this world, and to care about that
family the way we care about our own."
"Invest in the human family. Invest in people. Build a little
community of those you love and who love you."
# Chapter, The Audiovisual, Part Three
"Be compassionate," Morrie whispered. "And take responsibility for
each other. If we only learned those lessons, this world would be so
much better a place. Love each other or die."
# Chapter, The Twelfth Tuesday
"Mitch," he said, returning to the subject of forgiveness. "There is
no point in keeping vengeance or stubbornness. These things I so
regret in my life."
"Forgive yourself. Forgive others. Don't wait..."
# Chapter, The Thirteenth Tuesday
The story is about a little wave, bobbing along in the ocean, having
a grand old time. He's enjoying the wind and the fresh air--until he
notices the other waves in front of him, crashing against the shore.
"My God, this is terrible," the wave says. "Look what's going to
happen to me!"
Then comes along another wave. It sees the first wave, looking grim,
and it says to him, "Why do you look so sad?"
The first wave says, "You don't understand! We're all going to
crash! All of us waves are going to be nothing! isn't it terrible?"
The second wave says, "No, you don't understand. You're not a wave,
you're part of the ocean."
# Chapter, Conclusion
Have you ever really had a teacher? One who saw you as a raw but
precious thing, a jewel that, with wisdom, could be polished to a
proud shine? If you are lucky enough to find your way to such
teachers, you will always find your way back. Sometimes it is only
in your head. Sometimes it is right alongside their beds.
author: Albom, Mitch, 1958-
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tags: biography,book,inspiration,non-fiction
title: Tuesdays With Morrie
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(DIR) book
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(DIR) non-fiction