Inspiring books: Tuesdays with Morrie

Have you heard of the book Tuesdays with Morrie?  

It  has sold 14 million copies.  It’s written  by Mitch Albom, who, each Tuesday, visited his dying old professor and mentor, Morrie, to learn what Morrie had learned about life. It’s a superb book. Here are my favourite snippets:

On learning how to live by accepting we’re going to die:

“Everyone knows they’re going to die, but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently.”

Morrie’s suggestion:  “To know you are going to die, and to be prepared for it at any time. . .That way you can actually be more involved in your life while you’re living. . .

Do what the Buddhists do.  Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, ‘Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be?’”

 “Most of us walk around as if we’re sleepwalking. We really don’t experience the world fully, because we are half-asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do. . .[Facing death changes that.] You strip away all that stuff, and you focus on the essentials.  When you realize you are going to die, you see everything much differently.”

On the importance of developing our “spiritual” side:

“Even I don’t know what ‘spiritual development’ means. But I do know we’re deficient in some way. We are too involved in materialistic things, and they don’t satisfy us. The loving relationships we have, the universe around us, we take these things  for granted. . .

Because I know my time is almost done, I am drawn to nature like I am seeing it for the first time.”

On the importance of learning how to love:

“Love is so supremely important. As our great poet Auden said, ‘Love each other or perish.’ “

“In business, people negotiate to win. They negotiate to get what they want . . . Love is different. Love is when you are as concerned about someone else’s situation as you are about your own.”

“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 or nurtured while you were here.”

“Invest in people. Build a little community of those you love and who love you.”

 On the importance of having children:

“Whenever people ask me about having children or not having children, I never tell them what to do. . .I simply say, ‘There is no experience like having children.’  That’s all.  There is no substitute for it.  You cannot do it with a friend. You cannot do it with a lover.  If you want the experience of having complete responsibility for another human being, and to learn how to love and bond in the deepest way, then you should have children.”

On the importance of experiencing the emotions fully and then detaching from them: 

“Turn on the faucet. Wash yourself with emotion. It won’t hurt you. It will only help. If you let the fear inside. . .then you can say to yourself, ‘All right, it’s just fear. I don’t have to let it control me. I see it for what it is.‘

Same for loneliness: you let go, let the tears flow, feel it completely–but eventually be able to say, ‘All right, that was my moment with loneliness. I’m not afraid of feeling lonely, but now I am going to put that loneliness aside and know that there are other emotions in the world, and I am going to experience them as well. Detach.’ “

On the importance of embracing aging:

“All this emphasis on youth–I don’t buy it.  Listen, I know what a misery being young can be, so don’t tell me it’s great.  All these kids who came to me with their struggles, their strife, their feelings of inadequacy, their sense that life was miserable, so bad they wanted to kill themselves . . .

And, in addition to all the miseries, the young are not wise. They have very little understanding about life. Who wants to live every day when you don’t know what’s going on? When people are manipulating you, telling you to buy this perfume and you’ll be beautiful, or this pair of jeans and you’ll be sexy–and you believe them! It’s such nonsense. . . 

I embrace aging. . .

It’s very simple. As you grow older, you learn more.  If you stayed at twenty-two, you’d always be as ignorant as you were at twenty–two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It’s growth. It’s more than the negative that you’re going to die, it’s also the positive that you understand you’re going to die, and that you live a better life because of it. . .You should know something. All younger people should know something. If you’re always battling against growing older, you’re always going to be unhappy, because it will happen anyway.  . .You have to find what’s good and true and beautiful in your life as it is now.”

On the importance of pursuing the right values:

“We put our values into the wrong things. And it leads to very disillusioned lives.  . .

We’ve got a form of brainwashing going on in our country. 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.

Wherever I went in my life, I met people wanting to gobble up something new. Gobble up a new car. Gobble up a new piece of property. Gobble up the latest toy. And then  they want to tell you about it, ‘Guess what I got? Guess what I got?’

You know how I always interpreted that? These people were so hungry for love that they were accepting substitutes. They were embracing material things and expecting a sort of hug back.  But it never works.  You can’t substitute material things for love and or gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship.”

“If you want to find a meaningful life . . . devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.”

“If you’re trying to show off for people at the top, forget it. They will look down at you anyway. And if you trying to show off for people at the bottom, forget it. They will only envy you.  Status will get you nowhere. Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone.”

On the importance of  listening well, giving others your full attention:

“Why do you think it’s so important for me to hear other people’s problems? Don’t I have enough pain and suffering of my own?

Of course I do. But giving to other people is what makes me feel alive. Not my car or my house. Not what I look like in the mirror.  When I give my time, when I can make someone smile after they were feeling sad, it’s as close to healthy as I ever feel.

Mitch Albom: “I came to love the way Morrie lit up when I entered the room. He did this for many people, I know,  but it was his special talent to make each visitor feel that the smile was unique.

‘Ahhh, it’s my buddy,’ he would say when  he saw me.  . .And it didn’t stop with the greeting. When Morrie was with you, he was really with you. He looked you straight in the eye, and he listened as if you were the only person in the world.”

Morrie: “I believe in being fully present. That means you should be with the person  you’re with. When I’m talking to you now, Mitch, I try to keep focused only on what is going on between us. I am not thinking of what’s coming up this Friday. I am not thinking about doing another Koppel show, or about what medications I’m taking. I am taking to you. I am thinking about you.”

 “We are great at small talk: ‘What do you do?’  ‘Where do you live?’ But really listening  to someone–without trying to sell them them something, pick them up, recruit them, or get some kind of status in return–how often do we do that anymore?”

On the importance of marriage and working hard to make it work:

“I feel sorry for your generation . . . In this culture, it’s so important to find a loving relationship with someone because so much of the culture does not give you that. But the poor kids today, either they’re too selfish to take part in a real loving relationship, or they rush into marriage and then six months later, they get divorced. They don’t know what they want in a partner.  They don’t know who they are themselves–so how can they  know who they’re marrying . . . It’s sad, because a loved one is so important. You realize that, especially when you’re in a time like I am, when you’re not doing so well. Friends are great, but friends are not going to be here on a night when you’re coughing and can’t sleep and someone has to sit up all night with you, comfort you, try to be helpful.”

Mitch Albom: “Is there some kind of  rule to know if a marriage is going to work?”

Morrie: “Things are not that simple. Still, 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.

And if you don’t have  common set of values in life, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble.

Your values must be alike. And the biggest one of those values. . .[is] your belief in the importance of your marriage. . .

Personally . . . I think marriage is a very important thing to do, and you’re missing a hell of a lot if you don’t try it.”

On the importance of understanding why people behave badly:

“People are only mean when they are threatened.”

On the importance of forgiveness:

“Forgive yourself before you die.  Then forgive others. . . There is no point in keeping vengeance or stubbornness. These things . . . I so regret in my life. Pride Vanity. . .

It’s not just other people 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 of what should have happened.  That doesn’t help you when you get to where I am. I always wished I had done more with my work; I wished I had written more books.  I used to beat myself up over it. Now I see that never  did any good. Make peace.  You need to make peace with yourself and everyone around you. . . Forgive yourself. Forgive others. Don’t wait, Mitch.  Not everyone gets  the time I’m getting. Not everyone is as lucky.”

On the importance of striving to be all we can be:

The biggest defect we human beings have is our short-sightedness. We don’t see what we could be.  We should be looking at our potential, stretching ourselves into everything we can become.