Hw - 24 Precis #3

Tuesdays With Morrie By Mitch Albom, Published by Doubleday, Sept. 1997
3/3rd of the book: The world, I discovered was not at all interested in me, neither was I to it. For a few years after I graduated from college, I wandered looking for a job and paying rent and finally landing a job as a columnist in the Detroit Free Press. I buried myself in accomplishments and relished in what I was doing, because with accomplishments, I believed I could control anything. I thought about my Professor time to time about what he use to say to me, "about being human and relating to others", but thinking like this would distant me from what my current life is already like. I had found out that the professor who taught me these things had become ill and I made it my duty to visit him before he passes. My visits with Morrie became more frequent since the loss of my job. Every Tuesday we have sessions where we talk about life, love, death and much more meaningful things that I was previously lacking. Morrie is visibly getting more ill, and he's well aware of it, but with each passing day I learn a little bit more about myself through him and his insights on the progressions of living verses death. Every Tuesday that has gone by so far, has been about the external and internal values of life such as our culture or our marriages or our views on death itself. Morrie's days are closing in and the more his time is shortened here, the more accepting he is of death. He says that he never hoped that his illness could be cured because he has now become a completely different self and there would be no point in returning to my old self; "one because I can't get any younger either" he says jokingly. My lasts encounter with Morrie was my most emotional because of the changed being I had become, Morrie laid there in his bed, tired and sickly and manages to say to me that I am his friend and that he loves me and I return the favor by giving him my last farewell kiss and we both cried. Morrie's funeral gathering was small and purposeful because he did not want his family to be hurt by the passing of him and I was told to talk to him at his grave site which I did, which almost felt natural to do.

Quotes: "As you grow old, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two, you'd always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It's growth. It's more than the negative that you're going to die, its also the positive that you understand you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it."(p.118) Basically to stay at one pace won't get you where your going any faster or any slower, aging is accelerating your depth of insights and experience but gradually meeting the finish line that ends this process.
"Forgive yourself before you die. Then forgive others."(p.166) Forgiving others before you forgive yourself is one not accepting ones self and not truly forgiving the person whom may have been offended. We have a tendency to forgive others and not ourselves building on regrets that forever keep building because we don't want to forgive ourselves for things we should have done or what should of happened.
"Death ends a life, not a relationship." (174) Even though a passing of an individual may seem like your connection with them is over, but it's not. Their impact on your life is what stays with you forever, therefore not really ending a relationship, but just the physical aspect of it.

Insights/Thoughts: All together this book really walked me through some important interpretations and perceptions of love, death and life using specific examples to evolve the level of insights and experiences to become weirdly relatable. One thing I really took out of this book was that no matter what our position is in life, is really to take it in stride and make the best out of it, because each new day is a brand new experience furthermore developing our own understandings of things around us. We may feel vulnerable at times, especially around those we care about, but if we are to just accept this feeling and conquer it, the result is lifting because we are able to feel more comfortable around it.