I knew what the book was about – a professor who is dying from the dreadful ALS – and his student from decades ago – back at his teacher’s feet – to learn lessons one last time – Life Lessons. Surely such a book is bound to be sad – and since we read to escape into an alternate world – why would I want to walk into a sad one – isn’t life sad enough?!
But then loss of life is inevitable – the great equalizer as it is called. So if I can learn something about how to face leaving the world when my turn comes, then “why not”, I think.
And so I start reading and am enchanted immediately with professor Morrie’s “living funeral”! This comes about when Morrie attends a colleague’s funeral & bemoans the fact that his friend never got to hear any of the wonderful things that people said about him. So Morrie gathers together a small group of friends and family and each of them speak and pay tribute to him – “Some cried. Some laughed. Morrie cried and laughed with them.”
Morrie and his student meet on Tuesdays and discuss everything from gaining deepened empathy for the troubles in the world when your own end is near, how humans always rush to fill in a silence gap with noise and chatter because we are “embarrassed by silence” and find “comfort in noise”, how it’s okay to feel sorry for yourself and have “a good cry” and then move on to concentrate on all the good things in life.
But the most important lesson of all – is the one on death and dying. Morrie says – “Everybody knows they’re going to die, but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently.” The “better approach”, according to Morrie – is to always be prepared for it, so you lead a better life. “Do what the Buddhists do. Every day, have a little bird on your shoulders 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?’”
“Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.” Morrie loves the window in his room because he can notice the change in trees, the different seasons – time passing – that nobody else has the time to observe as we are too busy supposedly living life.
Aging – “the human touch” when someone tends to you. Morrie pooh-pooh’s youth with “their struggles, their strife, their feelings of inadequacy……” AND – “in addition to all the miseries, the young are not wise”! “Aging is not just decay. 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.”
14 Tuesdays
“When you make peace with dying, then we can finally do the really hard thing – make peace with living.” “You live on – in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here.” “Death ends a life, not a relationship.”