Tuesdays with Morrie: Summary
Tuesdays with Morrie
Tuesdays with
Morrie by Mitch Albom sheds light on some long-forgotten yet meaningful things
that make life worth living. We have made ourselves so immersed in
planning for a better future that we have completely forgotten to live and
cherish the present. In times like these, we all need guidance from a person
who takes us out from the darkness of our chaotic lives to the serenity and
calmness of things life offers us.
This story is
about Mitch Albom and his sociology professor Morrie Schwartz. Mitch graduated
from his college with a promise to his professor to stay in touch. But then,
life happened, and he lost contact with his friends and professor from college.
Mitch had to face many bitter realities in his life which completely changed
the course of his life and he became a journalist for a newspaper, leaving
behind his dream to be a pianist.
Morrie had taught
Mitch twenty years prior, until one day Mitch saw his old professor on a famous
tv show. This brought into the memory lane of Mitch; the long-lost memories and
good old days spent with his professor in college, so he takes a flight to meet
his dying professor. The first meeting between Mitch and Morrie might be formal
from Mitch's side but on the part of Morrie, it was like they never parted ways.
This meeting becomes an interaction for every Tuesday for Mitch to learn the
subject of death and life from Morrie in his death bed.
Tuesdays with Morrie: Book Review
Mitch Albom; Tuesdays with Morrie
Unlike other
people, who are left with only a few months to live their life they spend it
depressing and contemplating the past. Contrastingly, in this book Mitch Albom
has talked about how his dying sociology professor, Morrie Schwartz, had spent
the last few months of his life relishing every moment of his life. Not only
that, this book gives you so many lessons about life and death, you can learn
from both; it depends on you which perspective you take. In the last few mot of
his life, Morrie taught the most important subject to his dearest student
Mitch, which will make you feel all the emotions as you read the book. You might
not be Mitch Albom but at some point, while reading this book, you are going to
wish to have had a teacher like Morrie :’)))
Idk if my review
did justice to this wonderful book, but I’m going to say that give it a read
and you are bound to fall in love with it. This is the kind of book that makes
you feel like someone has put a warm blanket on you on a cold December
day.
Tuesdays with Morrie: Quotes
Here are some of my
favorite lines from Tuesdays with Morrie.
"My
days were full, yet I remained, much of the time, unsatisfied"
“Accept what you are able to do and what you are not able
to do. Accept the past as past without denying it or discarding it. Learn to
forgive yourself and forgive others. Don’t assume that it’s too late to get
involved”
“Dying is the only thing to be sad over. Living unhappily
is something else. So many people living their life are unhappy”
“The culture we have does not make people feel good about
themselves. We are teaching the wrong things. And you have to be strong enough
to say if the culture doesn’t work don’t buy it”
“I may be dying but I am surrounded by loving, caring
souls. How many people can say that?”
“Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do
one thing, but you are bound to do something else. something hurts you, yet you
know it shouldn’t. you take certain things for granted, yet you know you should
never take anything for granted”
“So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They
seem half-asleep, even when they are busy doing things they think are
important. This is because they are chasing the wrong things. The way you get
meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself
to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that
gives you purpose and meaning”
“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 it in
we’ll become too soft. Love is the only rational act”
“Why are we embarrassed by silence? What comfort do we
find in all the noise?”
“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”
“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’re too busy being afraid”
“How we feel lonely, sometimes to the point of tears, but
we don’t let those tears come because we are not supposed to cry”
“We all yearn in some way to return to those days when we
were completely taken care of- unconditional love, unconditional attention.
Most of us didn’t get enough”
“As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two,
you’d be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay. It is
growth”
“Oh, if I were young again!” “You know what that
reflects? Unsatisfied lives. Unfulfilled lives. Lives that haven’t found
meaning. Because if you’ve found meaning in your life, you don’t want to go
back. You want to go forward”
“You can't substitute material things for love or for
gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship”
“We are great at small talk. But really listening to
someone- without trying to sell them something, pick them up, recruit them, or
get some kind of status in return- how often do we get this anymore?”
“We all have the same beginning- birth- and we all have
the same end- death. So how different can we be?”
“Forgive yourself before you die. Then forgive others”
“it’s not just other people we need to forgive. We also
need to forgive ourselves, for all the things we didn’t do. All the things we
should have done. You cant get stuck on the regrets of what should have
happened”
“You need to make peace with yourself and everyone around
you”
“None of us can undo what we have done, or relive a life already recorded. There is no such thing as ‘too late’ in life”