Tuesdays with Morrie

The story is about death and life. Albom Mitch, a famous journalist of sport news that had gotten fortunes in his career at the expense of sacrificing his dreams, happened to see his old professor, Morrie, interviewed on ABC Nightline, surprised that his respectable mentor had been next to death. Driven by sadness, Albom decided to get touch with his old mentor in quickness. What started as a reunion turned into the project of lifetime.

Morrie, a professor of social psychology teaching in Brandies University, was fond of dancing in church every Wednesday and had a rejoicing life until August 1994, a gloomy summer. By the day on August 1st, Morrie had searched for the reason why his body had been so weak for long, but all in vain. However, the last doctor he met finally gave the dreadful answer, which is much more than a sentence to death—he had gotten ALS.

ALS, also called Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a disorder that affects the function of nerves and muscles and gradually melts one’s body until death. It is just like aging, rapid and aggressive aging; so to speak, what Morrie was facing is not just a disease but a long-existing yet commonly neglected philosophical problem: How do we look upon death and aging?

Death, so-called destined end, is which all of us are doomed to face, regardless the virtue or the vicious, the rich or the poor. It always looks so far from us that we, out of fear, are accustomed not to put eyes on it and avoid it. When it comes to death, we always can’t take it apart from sorrow, melancholy, and even doom. It’s said that death give life meanings, because without an end life is just a suffering. However, could it be true when we are really facing death, the end of life?

Morrie, a man forced to face death, present a totally different attitude and re-define death and life. After he walked out of the clinic where he heard the startling news, he asked himself not to be withered up and disappear but to make the best of his time left. In the second Tuesday class, Morrie suddenly break a long silence. ” Dying, “he said, “is only one thing to be sad over, Mitch. Living unhappily is something else. So many of the people who come to visit me are unhappy.” Why? He continued, “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.”

Life became a suffering because we are living on wrong things. Driven by lust, enslaved by money, we had forgotten who we really were and turned out to endlessly pursue things or achievement. Just like Sisyphus who was condemned to ceaselessly rolling rocks, we were trapped to futile and hopeless labor by ourselves. We make the life be a contradiction. Then, what’s the true meaning of life? Throughout the exploration with Albom, Morrie showed greatest insight into life. In a fragments of memory, Morrie said that life is a wrestling match: You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else. “Which side wins?” Albom asked. Morrie smiled giving a moving answer, “Love wins. Love always wins.”

From family to kinds of relationship, love stimulates us to be strong and tender and drives us to take responsibility in bravery. However, the overwhelming commercial information by capitalism have reversed it--Owning things is good. More money is good. We are thinking that embracing material things and expecting a sort of hug back. Nevertheless, true love is empathy, tenderness, spending time with others, and just as Morrie said, “is not what money and power could substitute for.” If we were thoughtful of other, there would be no denying that love is fundamental of life.

Throughout the life, we are meant to experience failure, pain, heartache, and finally-death, but life is not completely under the darkness of despair. Morrie had drawn down glaring silver lines with his paralytic body—just love it.