Review on: Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
Rating: 4/5
So a couple of weeks ago, I finally picked up and read Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom. Another wonderful book about life, love, family, death, faith, grace, and a lot of other things. I’ve read For One More Day and Five People You Meet in Heaven, but Tuesdays with Morrie comes out as more personal because it’s mostly about the interaction between two people – a student, and his teacher.
You know, in Chinese culture, teaching is one of the most revered positions. People look up to people like Mencius and Confucius, wise people who have so much knowledge and wisdom to impart on other people. But in our more Westernized culture, we sometimes forget that teachers aren’t only the people who lecture us in our classes, or who give us passing and failing marks that somewhat determine our future. Rather than the boring teacher who only reads from his book and doesn’t teach beyond the words required by the educational institution they’re in, I believe that teachers are people who teach you about life, and who leave you with something that you can take beyond the classroom.
In this book, Mitch Albom is faced with the news that his professor from university is sick, and his illness cannot be cured. It’s a slow and painful death that will eventually leave him unable to do even the simplest of things. Here, we see Albom going back to his college roots, reminiscing on his younger days when he had such ideals and dreams for the world. Here, we see Albom going back to being a student, while his professor talks to him about the past and how it might affect his future.
This, is about seeing life from the eyes of somebody who has lived it, and is now about to face the next step- death.
I find that one of the nice things about reading a Mitch Albom book, is that it forces you to reflect on areas that you otherwise ignore for the most part of your life. The funny thing is, we dream BIG when we’re little, we imagine all the things we want to do, all the places we want to go, what we’re going to do and what we’re not going to do, and how we won’t be like the adults who forget about the important things in life. But as we get older, we begin to realize how idealistic our childhood dreams were, and we conform or adapt to fit society, inevitably becoming the adults that we always said we wouldn’t become. In Tuesdays with Morrie we find that along with Mitch Albom who is reminiscing about the past, we too are forced to look back on our life and wonder if what we wanted to achieve in life, is where we are (or where we are headed). Because life is not just about looking forward, here we see that looking back and dwelling on the past, sometimes helps us to see a clearer future. Sometimes, we have to go back to a simpler time, before we figure out where we stand.
As always, Mitch Albom’s book doesn’t lecture, but it makes you think about where you are. Because as long as we are alive, it is never too late to look back, see things clearly, and change the future that has yet to happen. Tuesdays with Morrie helps us to see the beauty of life from the eyes of a dying man, and it helps us to look back and think…….when we die, will we look back on our life the same way Morrie did?
