Book Summary- Tuesdays with Morrie

 

Savour simple stuff. Try to look for perfection in an average day. A day is never a perfect day, until we make it.

This is an amazing book by bestselling author Mitch Albom in which he shares the pearl of wisdom passed on to him by his Professor  Morrie Auschwitz before he finally died one fine morning.

We all come across so many people walking around with a meaningless life.  They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important. This is because they’re chasing the wrong things all the time.

Professor and Mitch have these intense talks with each other every Tuesday in which Professor Morrie shares his personal life experiences and draws some really great life lessons out of them. If one could inculcate these values in one’s life in real terms, then it’s going to be life changing for that person. He or She will be able to live his or her life with purpose and meaning in it. The person will be able to live joyfully and completely without much complaints with any person or the life per se.

1^st Tuesday- About the world

In this session, Professor Morrie and Mitch talk about the worldly things and the people in it. Professor expresses his feelings about how people remain distant from each other all the time when they are alive, physically and emotionally both. He expresses his inability to understand why two sides experiencing rough patch between them don’t simply communicate with each other and solve their problems. Why do they allow false ideas and misinformation in their precious relationship? So, according to him, communication is the key to keep relationships intact.

All our lives we’re just too busy with our errands and we don’t want to listen to what others have to say, what are they going through. The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in. We think we don’t deserve love, we think if we let in we’ll become too soft. But, Love is the only rational act. We need to understand this.

2^nd Tuesday- About feeling sorry for yourself

If you feel sorry for yourself, if there is anything to mourn about…then mourn. But don’t drown yourself in it. Don’t get consumed by it. Give it sometime. Give yourself a good cry if you need it. But then stop mourning & concentrate on all the good things in your life. It would be really useful to put a daily limit on self-pity. Just a few tearful minutes, then on with the day.

3^rd Tuesday- About regrets

Do you have any regrets? Do you lament lost friends? Would you have done things differently? Would you be consumed with sad thoughts of all that you missed? Would you regret the secrets you had kept hidden?

Well, the culture doesn’t encourage you to think about such things until you’re about to die. We are so wrapped with egotistical things, career, family, having enough money, meeting the mortgage, getting a new car. We are involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going. So, we don’t get into the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying, Is this all? Is this all I want? Is something missing? You need someone to probe you in that direction. It won’t just happen automatically.

Do you take care of others or take care of your inner child? Return to traditional values or reject tradition as useless? Seek success or seek simplicity? If you haven’t asked yourself these questions then, you must ask and try to answer them. It’s very important for your personal growth. Finding answers to these questions is like searching for meaning of life, and it helps you live more deliberately, joyfully and completely.

4^th Tuesday- About death

Everyone knows he or she's going to die, but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently. There’s a better approach- To know you’re 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 it the Buddhists way. Everyday 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?" If you really listen to that bird on your shoulder, if you accept that you can die at any time, then you might not be as ambitious as you are. The things you spend so much time on, all this work you do, might not seem as important. 

In this situation, the spiritual development helps. You see, e all are 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. Through spiritual development, you start appreciating things more. You start savouring simple stuff around you. Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.

5^th Tuesday- About family

There is no foundation, no secure ground, upon which people may stand today if it isn’t the family. If you don’t have the support and love and caring and concern that you get from a family, you don’t have much at all. Love is so supremely important. Love each other or perish. Without love we are birds with broken wings.

Sure, people would come visit, friends, associates, but it’s not the same as having someone who will not leave. It’s not the same as having someone whom you know has an eye on you, is watching you the whole time. This is part of what a family is about, not just love, but letting others know there’s someone who is watching out for them. This is a kind of spiritual security. Nothing else will give you that. Not money. Not fame. There is no experience like having children. There is no substitute for it. You can’t do it with a friend. You can’t 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.

6^th Tuesday- About emotions

In this session, the emphasis is on learning to detach. You would be surprised…right? Talking about emotions and then emphasis is on detachment? Well, Do it the Buddhists way. Don’t cling to things, because everything is impermanent here. But detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That’s how you are able to leave it.

Take any emotion- love for a woman, or grief for a loved one. If you hold back on the emotions- if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them- you can never get to being detached, you are too busy being afraid. You are afraid of the pain, you’re afraid of the grief. You are afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails. But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely.  You know what pain is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, “All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment.” So, that’s how you experience all the emotions and be ready to detach.

7^th Tuesday- About the fear of aging

We can have a better perspective about aging. Why do we put so much emphasis on youth? You see, when we are young, we struggle a lot, we have feelings of inadequacy all the time. Most of the time we feel miserable in our lives. Obviously, we are strong and energetic at our best. We have more confidence than ever to conquer the world. But we are not wise when we are young. We have very little understanding about life.

We shouldn’t fear from aging. We should rather embrace aging. As we grow, we learn more. If we stayed at 22, we’d always be as ignorant as we were at 22. 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. If you’re always battling against getting older, you’re always going to be unhappy, because it’ll happen anyhow. It won’t matter what you tell yourself.

8^th Tuesday- About Money

You see, we have a problem. We put our values in the wrong things. And it leads to very disillusioned lives. We should rather enjoy simple pleasures like singing, laughing, dancing. Material things hold little or no significance. When you die, you can’t take it with you. It’s not that we don’t need any of these materialistic possessions in our lives. We do need them but there’s a limit, we should stop when we have sufficient of them with us. We should draw the line. We shouldn’t be always wanting to gobble up something new, like new car, new property etc.

There is a big confusion over what we want versus what we need. The truth is, you don’t get satisfaction from these things.  You actually get satisfaction from offering others what you have to give. It doesn’t have to be money, necessarily. Give it if you want, if you have enough of it, and someone is in desperate need of it. Otherwise, you could give your time, your concern, your storytelling. 

If you have some skill, you could go and teach the not so privileged ones and the deprived ones. In turn, you earn their respect by offering something you have. You could go to hospitals and shelters where there are many lonely people who only want some companionship. This is how you 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. Don’t get yourself caught in the rat race to gobble up more and more. This is a smokescreen.

9^th Tuesday- About how love goes on

Love is something which helps you stay alive, even after you are gone. So spread love. Be fully in present. That means you should be with the person you’re with. Many people with far smaller problems are so self-absorbed, their eyes glaze over if you speak for more than 30 seconds. They already have something else in mind- a friend to call, a fax to send, a lover they’re daydreaming about. So, they have divided attention, basically. Give time to your spouse and kids. Talk to them. Kiss them good night. Listen to your friends and family. It doesn’t matter if you’re able to help or not. Be emotionally available at least. Show your concern when needed. This is how you stay alive even after you’re gone. The love you share remains alive forever in people’s hearts. It goes on till eternity.

10^th Tuesday- About marriage

Marriage…almost everyone has a problem with it. Some have problems getting into it, some have problems getting out. There is a lot of commitment issue, especially in today’s 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 are 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 are marrying? It’s sad, because a loved one is so important. You realize that, especially when you’re not doing so well. Friends are great, but friends are not going to be there on a night when you are coughing and can’t sleep and someone has to sit up all night with you, comfort you, try to be helpful. 

In a marriage, you get tested. You find out who you are, who the other person is, and how you accommodate or don’t. There are not any rules as such which could tell you if a marriage is going to work? However, there are few observations you can say, which have been found 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. Most important of all, your belief in the importance of your marriage.

Professor Morrie personally thinks marriage is a very important thing to do, and you’ll miss a hell of a lot if you don’t try it. Love each other or perish.

11^th Tuesday- About our culture

Culture plays a very significant role in our lives. 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. You start making money a god. It is all part of this culture.

Thus it becomes very important that you build your own little subculture. Building subculture doesn’t mean you disregard every rule of your community. You don’t go around naked, for example. You don’t run through red lights. The little things, you can obey. But the big things- how we think, what we value, those you must choose yourself. You can’t let anyone or any society determine those for you. For instance, in your old age if you’re not able to walk, if you wake up some mornings wanting to cry, there is nothing embarrassing or shameful about it. It is the same for women not being thin enough, or men not being rich enough. It’s just what our culture would have you believe. Don’t believe it.

Every society has its own problems. You can definitely move somewhere else if you don’t like the society you currently live in, but then you’ll have to deal with a whole new set of problems in the new society you move into. You can’t keep running away. You have to work at creating your own culture. Be compassionate. Take responsibility for each other. If we only learned those lessons, this world would be so much better a place. Love each other or die.

12^th Tuesday- About forgiveness

Forgive yourself before you die. Then forgive others. Not everyone gets the time. Not everyone is lucky. There is no point in keeping vengeance or stubbornness. The things- pride, vanity, you so regret in your life. Why do we do things we do? It’s not just other people we need to forgive. We also need to forgive ourselves. Yes. 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. Make peace with yourself and everyone around you. Remember the Tension of opposites. You mourn your dwindling time, but cherish the chance it gives you to make things right.

13^th Tuesday- About the perfect day

What is a perfect day? When would that perfect day be? Well, that perfect day would be the day when we’ll make peace with the idea of dying. We are so afraid of the sight of death. That’s why as soon as someone dies in a hospital, they pull the sheets up over their head. They can’t wait to get it out of their sight. People act as if death is contagious. We need to understand that death is not contagious, it is as natural as life. It’s part of the deal we make. If we know, in the end, that we can ultimately have that peace with dying, then we can finally do the really hard thing, which is to make peace with living.

It’s natural to die. We think because we’re human we’re something above nature. We’re not. Everything that takes birth, dies. Savour simple stuff. Try to look for perfection in an average day. A day is never a perfect day, until we make it.

14^th Tuesday- We say Goodbye

After such intense talks with Mitch, finally Professor Morrie said Goodbye. He gave the most important and valuable thing he had, that is the “wealth of wisdom”. He asks the people to be more open, to ignore the lure of advertised values, to pay attention when your loved ones are speaking, as if it were the last time you might hear them. None of us can undo what we’ve done, or relive a life already recorded. There is no such thing as “too late” in life. We can keep changing ourselves until the day we say Goodbye, and come out as a better person or an evolved individual. We can definitely change the way we spend our time on earth, if we inculcate these values in our lives.

That's it guys. This was all. So, it's worth reading the book, I'd say. Professor Morrie in an intense talk with Mitch, has given some amazing life lessons. If one inculcates these values in one's life, he or she will be able to live a peaceful and joyful life. I would strongly recommend the readers out there to spare some time and read this emotionally intense yet wisdom rich book. It's going to be of great help.

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