Be Like Morrie...

The last class of my professor’s life took once a week, in his home by the window in his study where he could watch a small hibiscus plant shed its pink colour. The class met on Tuesday. No books were required. The subject was the meaning of life. It was taught based on experience.

This is the last paragraph from the book Tuesday with Morrie, by Mitch Albom. I read this book twice and its really inspiring book with the normal English words as well as the simple explanation.

This is an old book, which the first published in 1997. It based on the real life between Mitch Albom, the writer, reporter and columnist with his old professor Morrie Schwartz. His old professor suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a disease that related to neurological system. Unfortunately, there is no cure for this fatal disease, in fact the patient have to go through the decay in the body function. ALS melts the nerves and left the body a pile of wax. The patient lost the control over muscles, so the patient cannot walk, move and standing. And finally, over the time, patient will dead.

Instead of mourning his disease, Morrie make a decision to narrate his story to Mitch. At least, his philosophy of life will teach others. Morrie walk that final bridge between life and death, narrate the trip. The class between old professor and young man took place on Tuesday.

The Lessons

There are many lessons in this book and below are some of them that I wanna share with you.

1)      Feel the pain of others

What do you feel when you seen other people suffering in other part of the world? Do we really care? Or we just watch without feeling anything, feeling that we should have some kind of responsibility to help them.

Morrie as he suffering from this disease always feel closer to people who suffer than he ever did before.  He feels the pain when he saw on TV in Bosnia running across the street, getting fired upon, killed innocent people.

How about us? Do we need to suffer first before we can feel sorrow for other?

2) Don’t Scare of Death

It is interesting when Morrie said

“When you learn how to die, your learn how to live”.

Giving our situation as a muslim, this quote totally correct. Islam is always asking his followers to remember death because by reminding it and the life in the hereafter, our behave will changes.

Morrie continued,  “ most of us walk as we are sleepwalking. We really don’t experience world fully because we’re half-asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do”.

And facing death changes all that.

3) Family: the basic constitute of society

You might recall what on the thing I have wrote last time on title of marriage? and on of the point I is that marriage is the basic of any civilization. Look this current situation especially inside our country, many of the social problems arises as the result of unstable family. Children are running away from family because the parent doesn’t have time to spend with them. 

4) Go through life as it is

It’s a normal character of human being to have feeling afraid of new things. We are afraid when we want to go for the first interview. We are afraid to present a class project in front of people. We are afraid to speak to others. We are afraid being alone if people we love left us. But when we have gone through those things we feel relief. We know what the feeling: loneliness, anxiety, shyness etc. and how to face it. 

The idea is that are those feeling are our emotion. Don’t feel afraid to face it. Once you experience it, you can know what’s mean of having those feeling and start to feel other emotion.

Morrie said:”if you hold back on emotions-if don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them-you can never get to being detach, you are too busy of being afraid.

5) Don’t Fear of Aging

Most of women fear of aging. Some of them obsess to the cosmetic products as the way to eliminate wrinkles in the faces and other signs the she is getting older. They want to look beautiful in the eyes to their husband and other people.

Moorie look to this fear in different way. He said that aging is not just decay, it’s a growth .As you getting older, you become more mature and because of it you live a better life.

6)  Money

Morrie insisted that people always used money as substitutes to others. But after all, they not satisfied with all these things. We chased something that uncertain and have no limit.

So, instead of chasing for money and wealth that will never satisfy your desire, you better offering others what you have. It’s not mean only your money, make charity to needed people but also offer your talents to others, your  time and your concern.

7) Marriage

Morrie show his concern about current loving relationship amongst young people. Many couple could only live as husband and wife for few months and end with divorce.

The problem with the young couple is they don’t why they have to get married. They don’t know what they want.

Most of them don’t realize when they get older like Morrie, having the loved one is so important. When you older, sick and need full attention, your loved one which is going to sit all the day with you and try to comfort you.

Quotes

 “Accept what you are able to do and what you are not able to do.” (p. 18)

“Learn to forgive yourself and to forgive others.” (p. 18)

“So many people walk 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. 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.” (p. 43)

"There is no foundation, no secure ground, upon which people may stand today if it isn’t the family." (p. 91)

“ . . . If you’ve found meaning in your life you don’t want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to see more, do more. You can’t wait until sixty-five.” (p. 118)

“Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness.” (p. 125)

“Love each other or perish.” (p. 149)

Relaxlah!!!

28 February 2016
06:46 pm