Tuesdays with life

Tuesdays with Morrie

If you haven’t read this book you don’t know what you are missing. This is a true story about two individuals, a student and his teacher. It is a book about the intelligent conversations which happen between the student and his master. This book may not be very familiar with the young population (I am not so old: D) but the same book was in the best seller list of New York Times for consecutive 250 weeks! This books talks about the simple joys of life which we are missing.

Background

Morrie Schwartz, a history professor at Brandeis University, has been diagnosed with ALS and is dying. Mitch Albom is a former student (He didn’t visit his professor for many years), who had become a fairly well known sports writer, heard about his teacher from an interview decided to pay a visit. This visit soon turned into regular meetings - on Tuesdays. In this book Mitch Albom recounts his time spent with his 78 year old sociology professor at Brandeis University, the wisdom of life gained on every Tuesdays.

Even on his deathbed Morrie teaches us on how to live a full live.

Simple Ideas

“So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important. This is because they’re chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into 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 purpose and meaning.” – Morrie.

There are many books available on self improvement which talks about the ideas in this book but no one has touched my heart & soul in such an effective manner. Morrie teaches us the most important lesson of simplicity. Life is very short. We are always worried about different things in this materialistic world. All these things don’t matter at all. It is the love, the smile, the forgiveness that matters after all.

W. H Suden says in his poem “We must love one another or die.”
“As long as we can love each other, and remember the feeling of love we had, we can die without ever really going away. All the love you created is still there. All the memories are still there. You live on—in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here.”

Go and get a personal copy. It is a fast read simple book which you will always cherish.

We must love one another or die

I liked this poem a lot .. full of live & hope. Rather than fighting & fooling around lets love one another or die
------------------------------------------
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
and darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism¹s face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow,
"I will be true to the wife.
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages;
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

-- W. H. Auden