One of my all-time favourite books is ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’ written by Mitch Albom. I first read this book over ten years ago and recently saw the movie starring Hank Azaria and Jack Lemmon.
Morrie is a college professor who is slowly dying of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). Mitch re-connects with Morrie after years of no contact (even though he was his favourite professor at college) and in 14 short lessons conducted on a Tuesday he learns Morrie’s lessons on life.
The importance of love in his life is especially clear to Morrie as he nears his final days, for without the care of those he loves, and who love him, he would perish. Morrie clings to life not because he is afraid of dying, but because his greatest dying wish is to share his story with Mitch so that he may share it with the world. Morrie clings just long enough to reveal his story, then releases himself to death, leaving Mitch with the message that love brings meaning to any experience, and that without it, we may as well be dead.
The essence of Tuesdays with Morrie is that we need to stop and evaluate our lives at various points, make conscious decisions about how we live and be appreciative, compassionate and above all loving.
Morrie says that dying is just one thing to be sad about – living unhappily – that’s another matter. He asks Mitch questions that are relevant to us all: “Have you ever stopped to think about what you are running from?”, “Are you leading the life you want to lead?”, “Are you the person you want to be?”.
Morrie believes that if we can accept that we can die at any time then we will lead our lives differently. Work, money ambition – we bury ourselves in these things but we never step back and say ‘is this that I want?’ unless someone like Morrie teaches us to.
There are so many powerful lessons in this movie that I have written additional blogs scheduled over the coming months about each of the lessons he shares with his student Mitch.
Each of Morrie’s lessons contributes to a larger, all-encompassing message that each of us, Mitch especially, should reject popular cultural values, and instead develop our own. As Morrie sees it, our current culture creates suffering while Morrie has over the years created own culture founded on love, acceptance, and open communication.
One of my favourite messages in the book is about the tension of opposites:
“Have I told you about the tension of opposites?”, Morrie says.
“The tension of opposites?”
“Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn’t. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted. A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. And most of us live somewhere in the middle.”
“Sounds like a wrestling match” Mitch says
“A wrestling match.” Morrie laughs. “Yes, you could describe life that way.”
So, which side wins?
“Which side wins?” He smiles at me, the crinkled eyes, the crooked teeth.
“Love wins. Love always wins.”
Through the tension of opposites we come to understand that we learn from what hurts us as much as what loves us.
Until next time… take care
Helen .
