The Beginning of an End

“The truth is . . . once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.”- Morrie Schwartz

The word “end” might sound depressing, but actually when i think about it i realize it is somewhat good to think that our life will end eventually. The bad news is that we do not know when it will happen. This taught came to me while i was reading a book called Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom. This book taught me a valuable lesson that i should always value my life now, and that one should always appreciate what they have for one will never know what they have untill its actually gone.

Tuesdays With Morrie: An Old Man, A young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson is not a fiction novel, but it is a life story narrated by a stressed out journalist that wants to know his purpose of living. This narrator is Mitch Albom, who used to be Morrie’s top student while Morrie was still teaching sociology in Brandeis university. Mitch’s relationship with his favorite professor Morrie is more than just teacher and student, but Morrie treated Mitch as if he was his own son; just as Mitch treated Morries as his own father. Mitch loves Morries lectures so much that he attended to almost all sociology courses that Morrie had teaches. It came to the part where Mitch graduated from the university and he promised he will keep in touch with Morrie; but he never did. Untill one day Mitch faced dillemmas in his life concerning his job as a journalist, then he came back to Morrie to seek for advice.

Mitch found out that Morrie is now suffering from ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) which cause his body to slowly become paralyze. The rest of the book talked about how each Tuesday Mitch drives from Detroit to Boston to visit Morrie. Each Tuesdays they disscussed about different things like about facing death and aging. Mitch recorded every single conversation he had with Morrie as a reference to write this autobiographical documentary that contains many valuable life lessons that Mitch discovered throughout the fourteen Tuesdays where he visited Morrie. Mitch Albom calls this book “their last thesis together”, as Morrie demanded that he wants to share his life stories to many people in the world.

This book has taught me many life lessons, but an important message which i got from reading this story is that evryone needs love in order to live. Morrie’s favorite poet, W.H.Auden once said that “to live without love is to live with nothing”. Morrie really values love and he believes that everyone can reach their highest sense of fullfillment through love. During his last days on earth, it can be clearly seen that Morrie would not have survived that long without the love and care of the people that he loves the most. One more thing that always stays in my mind even after i finished reading the book is when Mitch asked Morrie how he prepares for death. According to Morrie, everyone have to accept the fact that they will die someday in order to for them to really appreciate what they have on earth. That makes me realize that we humans have very limited time on earth, and we should value our time by only doing things that we will not regret later when our time on earth finally comes to an end.

-Angelina-