Tuesdays With Morrie

For this break, I read a couple of different books and decided on one that I felt had the most impact on me to write about on this blog. Yet again, I chose to write about a memoir: Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom. Despite my previous knowledge of it being hard to write about memoirs, I am inclined to write about this one because of the way in which it touched my life, and my experience living life, and ultimately my heart.

Mitch Albom is a very successful author and in this novel specifically, Mitch writes about the relationship he and his greatest professor, Morrie Shwartz, had when he was taking his classes in college and then beyond that to when Morrie knows that he is dying. The book tackles the uncomfortable knowledge of knowing that you are dying, for the whole book takes place around the visits that Mitch has with Morrie as he is dying. Albom touches upon many aspects of the human experience in this novel and in my experience in reading it, I felt I was discovering the true way in which to live my life. All humans have the tendency to ask themselves and others questions that really have no specific answer to, for example, what is fear? what is death? why do we live? Questions such as these are similar to the ones that Mitch and Morrie discuss in Morrie's final months of life. Every Tuesday Mitch flies out to see Morrie, just for the day, and they discuss life, love, experience, and the meaning of what it is to be human. After reading this novel, my outlook on life has changed in many different ways. Morrie's ability to come to terms with the fact that he is dying, not mourn for his lost life, but instead, take advantage of the time that he has left really inspires me to view life as if it is short.

One of my favorite lines of the novel is when Morrie says, "We are too involved in materialistic things, they don't satisfy us. The loving relationships we have, the universe around us, we take these things for granted"(Albom 84). I think that Morrie really does touch upon an aspect of life that many humans are afraid to talk about, and that is the value and importance of materialistic items that are consuming our world today. I sometimes ask myself, what would I do without my cell phone? and I feel ignorant and ridiculous after doing so. Our culture and our society depends too much on materialistic items,(in my opinion) such as pricey cars, houses, clothes. We are all worried about what others think about us, but we do not take advantage of the love and the relationships and truly important experiences that we have each day. One thing that I do to remind myself that these types of things: phones, ipods, clothes, are really not as important as they seem is to think about my Grandma. I would give up every material item that I own for my Grandma to remember me again. That is what I believe to be important. I think that this is somewhat of the message that Morrie is portraying to Mitch in this novel, and just as Mitch learns to live a new type of life by the end of the novel, I am reminded of the true meaning of life; loving relationships and a fulfilling experience.

Morrie's undying ambitions and the truly admirable way in which he handles his inevitable death make me want to live life as if I was in the place that Morrie was throughout the book. One moment in the novel that really inspired me was when Mitch was observing Morrie in his suffering one day when they were visiting. Mitch writes, "But it was also becoming clear to me--through his courage, his humor, his patience, and his openness--that Morrie was looking at life from some very different place than anyone else I knew. A healthier place. A more sensible place. And he was about to die"(63). The relationship between the importance of life and the importance of death and the way in which Morrie handles this shows his strength as a human being. Reading this novel has really resulted in me having a slightly different outlook on life and I think that Mitch Albom does an extremely good job at portraying the life of this dying old man as an inspiring story from which all should learn.