It was late at night the other day, when I was half asleep. The typical loud voice of my husband woke me up and said, “It isn’t sufficient if you just have interest to read, you must read too!” So true, but it amuses me when ever he gets sarcastic. Hence pretended to continu
e sleeping to listen to more of such comments! He didn’t utter any such comments instead he started reading few interesting lines from some book. The most thought provoking lines on life; the practicalities, subtleties and the problems of life! Well good for him, I woke up and asked the name of the book, the chosen lines from them were of my favorite topic of course! Its called “
Tuesdays with Morrie” written by
Mitch Albom and I should be thanking him for getting me introduced to a truly amazing book.
It’s a running bestseller and an inspirational book that profusely touches the mind and hearts of the reader. After giving it a read, you will be imbibed with varied thoughts with which I can say that you start viewing and analyzing things with more diligence and responsibility.
Not that Mitch talks something very ‘new’ in the book. He talks about ‘life’ in which all of us are into a graduation now. However he generates the text and the context for the abstract thoughts that was always floating in our minds. An interesting outlet and the remarkable definitions for various genres of life such as love, marriage, death, culture, values, age, fear, relationships and many more.
It is a small book with not more than 200 pages. Has a simple story with not much of a plot series like the habitual novels. It’s a story of a professor who is suffering from a deadly disease and his struggle between life and death. The professor Morrie is an experienced intellectual personality who always tries to motivate his students. Like much of his admirer students, Mitch is fascinated by the conduct of this professor and one fine day it comes to his knowledge that his favorite professor is suffering from a fatal disease. Eventually, he visits his professor every Tuesday to discuss substantial issues about the genesis, death and about the large midsection of these two entities. And hence, it is named as ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’.
Each Tuesday meeting is a delightful desert of thoughts on various topics. The very serious pathos of life is finely wrapped with mild conversational humor to give the reader a lighter tone in reading. Its all about their conversation. Mitch’s jittering judgments upon various situations of life and Morrie’s interesting contradictory statements on them attracts the readers’ attention allowing them to submerge in deep solemn thoughts.
In between these thoughtful notes, we also come across the psychological growth and developments of Mitch from an amateur layman to a matured intellectual who grows with the intensification of professor’s illness.
This silent narration of Mitch’s growth along with the conversational contemplations of Mitch and the Professor makes one dwell into an outlook that frames his/her own life in a new perspective.
The book is beautifully summed up by
Ruth Jadodzinski who says:
‘Morrie left a wonderful legacy--- reminding us gently and persistently what is really important in life’ Following are some of the interesting lines from the book:
- "Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else."
- "Forgive yourself before you die. Then forgive others."
- "Love each other or die."
- "...if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too--even when you're in the dark."
- "...the truth is...if you accept that you can die at any time--then you might not be as ambitious as you are."
- "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."
- "Don't cling to things, because everything is impermanent."
- "When you learn how to die, you learn how to live."
- "Aging is not just decay...It's growth."
- "Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness."
- "I've learned this much about marriage. You get tested. You find out who you are, who the other person is, and how you accommodate or don't."
- "What's wrong with being number two?"
- "Death ends a life, not a relationship."
- "There is no formula to relationships. They have to be negotiated in loving ways, with room for both parties, what they want and what they need, what they can do and what their life is like."
