One of my favorite fiction authors is Mitch Albom. I’ve read many of his books. He is a no-frills type of writer. His sentences have just enough emotion, description, story arc, etc. I could go on. But his stories are memorable, tugging at the heart, and leaving one thinking about the tale long after they’ve finished reading it.

So, I had been searching for one particular book to read from the library, but it was always out. Recently, I was blessed to find it. So, I picked up Mr. Mitch Albom’s beautiful tale,  Tuesdays With Morrie. A memoir in which Albom recounts the fourteen Tuesdays he spent with his friend and mentor, Morrie Schwartz, prior to his death from ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease.

During my reading, I found so many nuggets of truth within this little book that I had to document some of the most profound and life-changing ones as great life reminders.

Disclaimer: These points are words and sentences taken from the dialogue conversations, descriptions, and thoughts. Most are in the same context found in the story; others, I have manipulated just enough for grammatical consistency. These are not my words, but the authors!

Enjoy! I highly recommend reading Tuesdays with Morrie!

  • The culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn’t work, don’t buy it.
  • The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.
  • I give myself a good cry if I need it. But then I concentrate on all the good things still in my life.
  • Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.
  • Most of us all walk around as if we’re sleepwalking. We really don’t experience the world fully because we’re half asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do. When you strip away all the stuff and you focus on the essentials, when you realize you are going to die, you see everything much differently.
  • There is no experience like having children. 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 learning how to love and bond in the deepest way, then you should have children.
  • The art of detachment. Take any emotion, love for a woman(man), or grief for a loved one, or fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on your emotions and don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them, you can never achieve detachment. Why? Because you’re too busy being afraid. You’re afraid of the pain, you’re afraid of the grief. You’re afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails, and you should recognize the emotion. And then detach from that emotion. For example, if you feel loneliness… let the tears flow and feel it completely, and then you say I’m not afraid of feeling lonely, but now I’m going to put the loneliness aside and know that there are other emotions in the world, and I’m going to experience them all as well. … I’m going to detach.
  • Don’t be afraid to grow old. Embrace aging. As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two years old, you’d always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. Its 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.
  • It is impossible for the old not to envy the young. But the issue is to accept who you are and revel in that. This is your time to be in every part of your age. … How can one be envious of where they are when they’ve already been there before?
  • People put their values in the wrong things. And it leads to a very delusional life. For example, money does not bring happiness. …The average person can get so fogged up that he has no perspective on what is really important. We need to stop embracing material things; it never works. Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness.
  • Believe in being fully present. That means you should be with the person you’re with and keep focused only on what’s going on between you both. The problem is everyone is in a hurry, they’re always thinking about the next thing. Once you start running, it’s hard to slow down.
  • People are only mean when they’re threatened, and that’s what our culture does. That’s what our economy does. Even people who have jobs in our economy are threatened because they worry about losing them. And when you get threatened, you start looking out only for yourself. … It is all part of this culture. I can obey the little things, but the big things, how you think, what you value, those you must choose for yourself. You cannot let anyone or any society determine those for you.
  • Forgive yourself. Forgive others. Don’t wait. Make peace with yourself and everyone around you.
  • 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. We also don’t believe we are as much alike as we really are. Whites and blacks, Catholics and Protestants, men and women. If we saw each other as more alike, we might be very eager to join in one big human family in this world, and to care about the family the way we care about our own. We all have the same beginning, birth, and we all have the same ending, death. Invest in the human family. Invest in people. Build a little community of those you love and who love you. In the beginning of life, when we are infants, we need others to survive. At the end of life, you need others to survive as well. But here’s the secret in the in-between, we also need each other.
  • There are a few rules I know to be true about love and marriage: If you don’t respect the other person, you’re going to have a lot of trouble. If you don’t know how to compromise, you’re going to have a lot of trouble. If you can’t talk openly about what goes on between you, you’re going to have a lot of trouble. And if you don’t have a common set of values in life, you’re going to have a lot of trouble. Your values must be alike. Your belief in the importance of marriage is critical. Marriage is a very important thing to do, and you’re missing a hell of a lot if you don’t try it. Love each other or perish.
  • Have you ever really had a teacher? One who saw you as a raw but precious thing, a jewel that, with wisdom, could be polished to a proud shine? If you are lucky enough to find your way to such teachers, you will always find your way back. Sometimes it is only in your head. Sometimes it is right alongside their beds.

References:

Photo by Bülent  Özgöç: https://www.pexels.com/photo/foggy-morning-stroll-in-golyazi-bursa-33613036/

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