Reflections on Tuesdays
with Morrie
“The greatest thing
you’ll ever learn
Is just to love and be
loved in return.”
“Nature Boy”
Nat King Cole
I read my 10th Anniversary Edition of Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
about nine years ago, around the same time that I had open-heart surgery, no
doubt because I was having serious thoughts about my own mortality and Tuesday’s with Morrie was a compact
little paperback about a sociology professor named Morrie Schwartz dying of
ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, who shares his journey to the final
frontier of life with a former student named Mitch Albom, and for some strange
reason known only to my muse I felt compelled to read it again; so I hunted it
down in my library and read it in four or five days over my morning coffee that
I spiced with a jot of honey and Napoleon Brandy.
After I read it, I loaned it to a friend who read it twice
during the week between my Sunday morning visits, and both times she was
brought to tears by Morrie’s dying experience; and when she returned my copy
after we discussed it, I read it again so it would be fresh on my mind for
today’s spiritual musing on Tuesdays with
Morrie…
Not everyone is born with a calling. Morrie Schwartz was. He
was born to be a teacher, and he taught sociology courses at Brandeis
University in the city of Waltham, Massachusetts; but how could he possibly
know that the final course of his life would be teaching a class on death and
dying with only one student, Mitch Albom? Life’s funny that way, but very few
people think about these mysteries. I do, because that’s my literary calling.
That’s the irony of my call back to Tuesdays with Morrie. I was called to audit the class again with
Morrie and Mitch on soul’s archetypal journey through life; that’s why I felt
compelled to re-read it, so I could explore everyman’s journey to the sad,
lonely end which I had already explored in my twin soul book Death, the Final Frontier but only this
time I was called to open the door to the other side where life continues with
meaning and purpose.
Morrie Schwartz began his journey to the final frontier of
his life a confirmed agnostic, believing that death was cold and final, with no
afterlife, God, or grand design; life was random and had no meaning and purpose
other than the meaning and purpose that we gave it, a lugubrious and despairing
existential philosophy with no happy ending.
“The culture we have
does not make people feel good about themselves,” Morrie told Mitch, when taking attendance in preparation for
their First Tuesday Talk About the World.
“And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn’t work, don’t buy
it.” That’s why Professor Schwartz chose to make his own culture long
before he fell victim to Lou Gehrig’s disease, a personal culture that
nourished his life with meaning and purpose.
“So many people walk
around with a meaningless life,” Morrie
taught Mitch in his attendance class that day before their First Tuesday Talk
About the World. “They seem half asleep,
even when they’re doing things they think are important. This is because
they’re chasing the wrong things. The way to get meaning in 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 meaning and purpose.”
That’s why Morrie Schwartz loved life so much, especially
dancing; he squeezed every moment of its precious goodness, which were
exponentially intensified the closer he came to dying; but Morrie’s precious
life moments were poignantly concentrated by his soul-constraining personal
paradigm that that was all he had, no more life after death, no rebirth, just a
cold grave waiting to embrace his mortal remains.
And then something magical happened, which is why I was
called by my muse to write today’s spiritual musing; Morrie’s suffering transformed
him and opened him up to see what his old agnostic self could not see before, that
“this is too harmonious, grand, and overwhelming a universe to believe that
it’s all an accident…”
And now about Mitch Albom, Morrie’s former student; what was
his story? Why did he reconnect with his old professor, whom he affectionately
called “Coach” when taking his sociology courses at Brandeis? That’s the key to
this story, if one can see it.
Young Mitch Albom graduated from Brandeis University full of
dreams and ideals, hoping to make it in the music industry. “My dream was to be
a famous musician” he said (he played the piano); “but after several years of
dark, empty nightclubs, broken promises, bands that kept breaking up and
producers who seemed excited about everyone but me, the dream soured,” and
Mitch went back to school and earned a master’s degree in journalism and took
the first job offered, as a sports writer; and after bouncing around from New
York to Florida, he landed a job in Detroit city for the Detroit Free Press, and thus began his ascent up the social ladder
of personal and material success—new house on a hill, cars, and stocks to build
up a nice little portfolio—“and it might have stayed that way, had I not been
flicking through the TV channels late one night, when something caught my ear…”
Mitch was
on the fast track of the existential journey of life, making it in his chosen
profession; but something was missing which his flourishing career could not
give him, and he floundered in the silent despair of his hollow feeling. Then
life intervened, as it always does when a soul gets stuck on its destined
journey to wholeness and completeness. “On such small things your life can
turn,” Mitch would later describe it to a reader’s question.
This is how it happened: the merciful and omniscient guiding
principle of life, which knows our destined purpose and is always there to
assist us when we get stuck, inspired Morrie Schwartz to ask the crucial
question when he learned that he had ALS:
“Do I wither up and disappear, or do I make the best of my time left?” And
Morrie, being the consummate teacher that he was, decided to make death his
final project, the center point of his days, and he began to record his
thoughts and feelings on the final journey of his life.
This is how Morrie’s inner self and guiding principle planted
the seed for what was to be his legacy to the world, the unexpected little book
Tuesday’s with Morrie that passed on
the wisdom he would accrue in his hastened journey: “Since everyone is going to
die, he could be of great value,” he reasoned to his class-to-be. “He could be
research. A human textbook. Study me in my slow and patient demise. Watch what
happens to me. Learn with me,” was Morrie’s working premise, which gestated
into the idea that set Tuesdays with
Morrie free in the mind of his former student; but Mitch Albom had to be
called to his destiny first, and that’s when divine synchronicity stepped into
his life to liberate the successful sports writer/broadcaster from the
despairing impasse of his personal malaise by inspiring one of Morrie’s friends
and fellow colleague from Brandeis University to send all the personal
aphorisms that Morrie had recorded, which had grown to forty by this time, to a
Boston Globe reporter who wrote a long feature story on Morrie Schwartz with
the headline: A PROFESSOR’S FINAL COURSE: HIS OWN DEATH. This story caught the eye of one of the “Nightline”
producers, who brought it to the host of the show Ted Koppel in Washington, D.
C. Koppel followed up with an interview with Morrie Schwartz, and as Mitch
Albom was casually flipping channels one night he heard a voice from his TV ask
the fateful question, “Who is Morrie Schwartz?” and Mitch went numb…
This has to be one of the most remarkable synchronicity
stories ever recorded, but that’s just how life works for those who have eyes
to see. There was Mitch Albom’s old professor seven hundred miles away whom he
hardly thought about since he graduated from Brandeis University and hadn’t
seen in sixteen years being interviewed by Ted Koppel on the late-night show
“Nightline,” what were the odds of Mitch catching his old professor’s name on
TV?
Truth be told, there were no odds because it was meant to be;
Mitch Albom got stuck on his own destined journey to wholeness and
completeness, and life intervened to get him unstuck; and the rest of the story
is history.
Mitch looked up his old professor who was wasting away with
ALS, and after a warm reconciliation they began to talk every Tuesday,
recording Morrie’s journey to his final destination; but what a journey, what
life lessons, what a wonderful little book that was born of their mentor-student
relationship that continues to teach the final course of Professor Morrie
Schwartz’s class—how to live life with
meaning and purpose.
——
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