TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE: A Book Review

                How would you feel when you know you are dying?

                Death is the only true emotion felt in this apathetic world. Majority is afraid of death. It is because many of us were not prepared to reach this horrific yet a natural course of our life cycle. Many of us were unable to fill those lives with meanings.

                We are too engrossed about this fast-paced life, of running after commercial wealth. We are too busy making money, traversing the ladder of our career and being greed of fame and power that we forget to ask ourselves, “Are these really important in my life? Would these things, money and power, I am working for be able to help me be comforted when I am about to die?”

                Yes. We do seldom talk about life so when death nears, our pride could not accept the fact that we lived for nothing, for we could not bring money and power in the afterlife. We are anxious of leaving this world of materialism. And that, we experience fear of the unknown.

                But not for the man I have known.

                And the name is Morrie, a sociology professor who taught me the Literature of Death and The Meaning of Life as he faced and slowly “detached” himself from his debilitating disease that turned him back to enjoy becoming a baby again, a neuromuscular degenerative disease characterized by ascending paralysis called Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), otherwise known as the Lou Gehrig’s disease.

                Morrie was introduced to me by Mitch Albom, Morrie’s student way back in College. Tuesdays With Morrie, the book, is the final thesis of Morrie and Mitch together. The topic is about The Meaning of Life. The setting is inside Morrie’s house in his study area. Tuesday is their working day. Socratic Method is the data gathering tool. A funeral was held in lieu of the graduation.

                Tuesdays With Morrie is a non-fiction based on a true to life story.

                Anyhow, Mitch was presented to me as always by Ebol, my dear patient, committed and high quality co-writer.

Literature of Death

                A wave is coming ashore. As it nears, it is growing annoyingly. It is exasperated as it sees those waves crashing as they reach the shore. Then another wave, knowing something is wrong to its friend asked, “What keeps you worried?” The annoyed wave responded, “Can’t you see? We are going to crash!”

                “Look, we are not just waves, we are part of the ocean”, said the other one.

And the two waves both reached the shore, crashed, and then reunited to the greater body where they belong, that is the ocean.

                Morrie too, was annoyed by his impending death, of how his ALS will gradually remove his independence, and of how will he react when he already need somebody to wipe his ass.

                However, just as how the wave was reminded that it is a part of a greater thing and the crash will open the gate to reach that great thing, Morrie was enlightened that his death will enable him to reach his real destination, his real place, his true purpose.

                Morrie, knowing his impending death, approached people to come and see him. Morrie wanted people to learn from his death. As his aphorism says, “When you learn how to die, you learn how to live.”

 He gave quotations about life and was published in newspapers. Through this, his story was discovered and shown in the television where Mitch, who lives on a deadline -too fast is the only speed he knows, and Morrie’s student way back after 16 years who did not keep his promise of keeping in touch because of choosing commercial wealth after realizing how short life and expecting his’ would not be an exception when his uncle died from pancreatic cancer, has seen him nearly dying.

                Mitch visited Morrie in his house. Morrie, knowing Mitch as a bright kid and being reminded with the importance of his death to reaching his real purpose, taught Mitch lessons about The Meaning of Life every Tuesdays, like as how they conducted their sociology classes way back in College.

                And Morrie was not disappointed. The true story of The Meaning of Life put into 192 pages might seem unimaginable, but Mitch Albom does it all. Now, 11 million copies of this deathbed seminar on life are already spread in the globe. Million lives claimed to have changed. Million spirits admitted they were moved to determine the clarity about life and what it means to become a human.

                Filled with aphorisms, this short read packs an emotional and philosophical wallop.
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