Tuesdays With Morrie

I know, I know, I just posted a book review. But I read this one so quickly and really loved it, so I just had to blog about it. I think every one I know has read Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom. But I hadn’t yet. I picked it up the same day I finished reading The Scarlet Pimpernel, and two days later I was finished. I just couldn’t put it down. I think I will have to read it a hundred more times; it was just so good and moving.

Morrie’s wisdom and insights are just amazing. Some of them are almost revolutionary, and yet they’re not. I particularly enjoyed his thoughts on aging. They made me think of President Monson’s talk last week, Finding Joy in the Journey.

“Mitch, it is impossible for the old not to envy the young. But the issue is to accept who you are and revel in that. This is your time to be in your thirties. I had my time to be in my thirties, and now is my time to be seventy-eight. You have to find what’s good and true and beautiful in your life as it is now. Looking back makes you competitive. And, age is not a competitive issue. The truth is, part of me is every age. I’m a three-year-old, I’m a five-year-old, I’m a thirty-seven-year-old, I’m a fifty-year-old. I’ve been through all of them, and I know what it’s like. I delight in being a child when it’s appropriate to be a child. I delight in being a wise old man when it’s appropriate to be a wise old man. Think of all I can be! I am every age, up to my own. Do you understand? How can I be envious of where you are—when I’ve been there myself?”

One of the other things I really like about this book was learning Morrie’s and Mitch’s stories as the book went along. They were very poignant and relevant to the topics Mitch and Morrie were discussing. What a life Morrie had! He must have been a truly remarkable person to have come from such difficult circumstances and to decide to make his life into something completely different. I would love to know more about his step-mother. I also loved Morrie’s comments on family. I feel so blessed to have the family I do. Both the one I was born into, and the one I married into. All of you are very dear to me!

“The fact is, there is no foundation, to secure ground, upon which people may stand today if it isn’t the family. It’s become quite clear to me as I’ve been sick. If you don’t have the support and love and caring and concern you get from a family, you don’t have much at all. Love is so supremely important. As our great poet Auden said, ‘Love each other or perish.’” “This is part of what a family is about, not just love, but letting other know there’s someone who is watching out for them. It’s what I missed so much when my mother died—what I call your ‘spiritual security’—knowing that your family will be there watching our for you. Nothing else will give you that. Not money. Not fame. Not work.”