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
