Let’s Talk About Death Today (For Morrie)

Note: no comics this post, I don’t think little stick-men doing silly things could represent what I’m about to talk about , instead, I will use actual pictures of Morrie Schwartz for…atmosphere.

There once was a great and inspirational man who often said that we must learn to die before we learn how to live. This great man was Morrie Schwartz.

If you don’t know him, I suggest you to search him up. You might’ve heard him if you know the book “Tuesdays With Morrie” (READ IT!).

Morrie for me is one of the greatest inspirational men that had ever lived. It wasn’t because of his achievements, his wealth, or his ideas that made him an inspirational being for me. In fact, he was just an ordinary guy like any of us.

So what makes him so special? Well, I’ll try to put in the least blunt way – He was going to die, and he was having the one of the best times of his life.

That’s simply it…that is why he is so inspirational. He was dying in a humiliating way (“can’t wipe my own ass”), yet he was so peaceful and satisfied during the process.

He had the courage to face death when most people would tremble in fear. He had the strength and will to live even though he knew he was going to die, when most people would just simply give up.

And most important of all, he had the chance to teach all of us a lesson on death – it was, like many said, his last and best lesson on Earth as a great teacher.

Today, I’m here to share with all of you from what I’ve learned from him, and I am absolutely honored to mention him in my post.

So let’s take a ride in the death cab, Schwartz style!

Know a little about Morrie – A Teacher to the Last

When Morrie was well and healthy, he worked as sociology professor and has taught thousands of students within his time. He was open minded and very expressive, he liked to dance and talk about feelings.

He didn’t let anything restrict him for his freedom of expression, if he wanted to dance, then he would with all of his attention and energy. Morrie would live his life like a child, but contribute to life like an adult.

Within his years of teaching, he has established many close relationships with his students, however, one particular young student was especially grateful for the connection he had with Morrie.

This student’s name is Mitch Albom, who later became the best-selling author of “Tuesdays with Morrie”.

This student was somewhat of an opposite character from Morrie, he was ambitious, logical and rarely expressive with his emotions – meaning he had lots to learn from Morrie.

When Mitch finally graduated university, he had maintained little or no contact with Morrie, Mitch was simply being himself…caught up within his ambition, therefore his work.

It wasn’t long before Mitch found out that his old professor had been sick, for a while.

Morrie’s ending

Morrie suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). This disease works like a candle; it melts his nerves and leaves his body as a pile of wax.

For Morrie, it worked from the bottom up, he lost the control over his legs during the early stages of the disease, then his hands, then takes his ability to breathe on his own, eventually taking his life as a result.

When Mitch learned about his professor’s condition, he immediately decided to go visit him, perhaps for the last few times.

Every time Mitch visits Morrie, Morrie would express his experience with the realization that he is going to die.  Morrie would also give advice on different aspects of living to Mitch, in other words, Morrie was giving his last lessons on Earth.

Mitch collected all of the last lessons that Morrie had given him, all of his experiences, advices and wisdom, and compressed them into a book called “Tuesdays with Morrie”.

This book contains all of the sadness, frustrations when Morrie was struggling with his disease. It contains the courage and resilience when Morrie constantly chooses to live even when his time is almost up.  It contains the little quirks of personality that Morrie has, that he rather have fun like a kid than to waste it being boring.

It contains the great inspiration and legacy he has left for us, it contains his Presence.

Morrie’s Lessons on Living

Your decision with life

Morrie said that during some mornings, he cries and grieves because of his deteriorating condition. Other mornings he feels extreme anger and denial, because he feels unfairness for the disease that he suffers.

Although he feels much emotional pain in those mornings, he said that those feelings are only natural for a human being with a fading life.

Whenever he feels the negative emotions, he just lets them take over for a moment, without resistance and judgment.

He allows them do the thing that they do, and he just moves on by making one decision.

He makes a decision that he wants to live.

He wants to enjoy the life that he has left, rather than wasting it away with grief and anger.

Lesson Learned

I deeply respect Morrie for his strong will and persistence with his decisions to live and enjoy the few weeks that he had left.

I have to admit on my behalf, that there are some days when I wake up and I just feel tired and pessimistic.

And I just struggle so hard with some of the easiest activities with life – sometimes even fearing that my depression came back to haunt me.

But you know what, the problem isn’t the negativity that resides within me, because it isn’t possible to be cleansed from all of our negativity – after all, human beings are naturally attracted to negative things.

Anyways, the main problem lies within my decision to let the negativity inside of me to take over my days, my weeks, or even my months.

Good thing that I had learned from the past, I learned that if I ignore that negativity, it’ll just come back stronger, and every time I ignore it, I become more vulnerable to it.

So I made a decision, just like Morrie, I simply decided, “no…that’s it! I’m tired of being sad! I’m tired of living my life like this!” As you can see, I was fighting my depression with anger and frustration.

And with that dynamic and “passionate” desperation to get out of my dark place, I eventually did.

And how did it all start? With one decision. I decided to be happy, and I followed through.

Giving up in the middle of the way was extremely intolerable, I was pressuring myself to think more positive, I treated the sadness in me like a little kid who needed heavy discipline.

I got control and respect from the person within me, eventually I got more control over my life. And now I volunteer weekly to help others in the same way that I did for myself.

Lesson Remembered

Every morning I wake up, and I make a decision, “do I want a happy day today?” I ask myself: “Yes I do!” I reply with determination and inspiration from Morrie.

I want to make the most of this day without even a single drop of life wasted.

I will take in every moment of life exposed to me with non-resistance. I will say yes to every moment, and accept them with a sense of stillness and quality.

I can move my legs and arms freely unlike Morrie, and I can wipe my own ass too! I can do anything that I want to right now at this moment, because I have the complete freedom to control my body.

To be able to control your body is something that is overseen, we have been too used to it. We need to appreciate our bodies for its mechanisms that keeps us alive, they are the reasons why we can do the things that we do.

So let’s appreciate what we have with our bodies, and appreciate what we can do with them.

If Morrie can do it with the last few days of his deteriorating life, then we can all do it with the rest of our days.

So let me ask you now, what decisions do you make?

Your decision with people

Morrie was very fond of one aspect of his life. He expressed his deep appreciation for that aspect, and that that is the only aspect of his life that maintains him.

That aspect of his life is people. Simple as that.

Despite of his conditions and his fatigue from the illness, he spent most of his efforts and attention on his family and friends during the lasting days of his life. Why? Because they loved Morrie, and Morrie loved them back even more.

Just prior to Morrie’s death, he tried to tell the world just how important relationships are. He tells the world to love the people around you with everything you’ve got, and always let them know that you do.

The greatest joy comes from the connection and love flowing around people who are close to you. And those only happen when you contribute and respond to them with every bit of your attention.

Relationships with people pretty much takes over the majority of the reasons for why we live. It’s not just Morrie that appreciates people, everyone of us do. It is the reason we do the things that we do, and it is the meaning that we have in our lives.

If people deny that relationships are important and that they enjoy being a “lone-wolf”, they are lying. People need people, it is what makes people…people!

There is no greater joy than to have the feeling that someone else just understood exactly what you feel or mean.

That sense of…connection cannot be put into words, in fact it could only be felt and not described. Words can only describe items of life with attributes of forms, and deep connections and relations with another human being is formless.

The true relationship between one person and another does not require any communications of form to transfer love and appreciation between one another.

They automatically fill the moment of their presence with deep connection and dedication for each other. This is why Morrie still felt that great loving atmosphere with one of his best friends, even during the times when Morrie couldn’t talk anymore and his friend couldn’t hear.

Lesson Learned

When Morrie talked about people, it was pretty much his main lesson on life. People are the most important, and I agree with him.

He has taught us:

• To have compassion for ourselves and for others.

• To express your feelings with your close friends and family, if you let your guard down, they will too.

• Open up your heart as far and wide as possible, until your love encompasses all existence around you.

• Be in the moment when someone interacts with you; be there with them, rather than inside your head.

• You are not alone, because everybody is connected as a bigger “form”.

Morrie’s wisdom and lessons are not unheard of, they are rather simple and expected. However, the importance does not lie within the acknowledgment of these wisdoms, rather the practice of them.

So what keeps us from expressing love and compassion for ourselves and others?

Why does it take some people a whole life time to learn the lessons of life?

Well, Morrie had an answer for it, and he learned that answer from his dying experience.

He stated that once you learn to die, you learn to live.

Lessons from dying?

The one thing he learned from dying was the detachment of identity and personal image – and ultimately the materialistic world that we all live in.

He said that the only thing that stops us from having compassion and love and expression towards ourselves and the people around us is…”ego, ego, vanity, vanity”.

Our ego is the part of ourselves that judges and compares. It is the part of us that ultimately forms separation between each individual human being.

Our ego is there to protect and to preserve our personal image, however, it keeps us from truly loving ourselves and others, it only makes us see the version of ourselves and others that is unacceptable and must be improved.

To love is to accept; your ego and vanity provide you with the qualities that are the complete opposite from acceptance.

For too long, our society has been pressuring us with it’s rules of happiness. I don’t know about you, but inside the society that I grew up in (whether in the East or the West), I was taught to achieve.

I was raised as a robot and my only mission objective was to have individual success.

What was the individual success? It was everything that had to do with self-interest, and nothing to do with contributing and responding to others. In fact, the only contributions that I was taught to make were the tactics to get more people on my side so I’d get more successful later.

I was also taught to chase after my selfish materialistic dreams. Getting lots of money, a great job, a big house, and a good wife.

I look back at what I felt was right, and I admit I really do feel shocked to have bought that crap. That philosophy eventually melted as I just felt so disconnected with everyone. I had no real connection with anyone, and it made me feel horrible period.

I decided that chasing after those materialistic dreams out of my own self-interest was not worth the pain and suffering I was experiencing. Therefore I had to find some other ways to look at the world, and find out what really makes people happy, and ultimately not lonely.

I stumbled upon Morrie. He taught me the importance of PEOPLE. He taught me to give love to others as if I’ve never been hurt before and that I KNOW that I never will be hurt.

He taught me to be compassionate with myself and others as if they are part of my family, and treat others with no judgment because we are all one and the same underneath…we are all human beings.

I remember him saying this one phrase to Ted Koppel in his interview that really struck me, it was phrased perfectly for me to understand so easily.

Morrie said in order to love and to be compassionate and to really enjoy the world you are living in, you must:

• “Only see the things and people around you for the way they are (acceptance), rather than seeing them the way you want them to be (ego, vanity).”

It’s such an easy and obvious philosophy, and yet it is sometimes such an impossible thing to do. We are so immersed with how we want things to be all the time, that we seriously forgot how beautiful everything is already around us.

The phrase was beautifully put, too many times we see thing through our ego.

• Hating and disliking people around us just because the concept we wish to see in them isn’t there.

• Unhappy with the world, just because the world isn’t working in the same way that we want it to be working in.

• Miserable in our lives, just because there are some things that we just cannot move on from, and say to ourselves that “that is the way it is.”

Let’s just for once stop living our lives because we want to change the people, the world, ourselves, our lives until they fit the desired concept that we have in mind.

Let’s just live to be, and live to see what is really out there, who is really around us, and who we really are.

Any last words Morrie?

I really think that Morrie Schwartz was a great man, he was so…vibrant and expressive with his feelings. He was free of stereotypes and self-examination, he lived his life just as himself, simple as that.

Many of us live our lives by acting our way through, because we might feel that we aren’t really good enough inside, or that the people around us might not approve of how we act. But let’s think about Morrie and the lessons he has left for us, to just be sincere with others and most importantly yourself.

He once mentioned to forgive yourself first, then forgive others. That is so true, we must first forgive and accept ourselves, because then we will truly have the clear senses of what is real about us and what is not.

I’m tired of acting through my life, because it makes me feel so disconnected from reality, from the people around me and ultimately from myself. I often described that experience as me being scientist watching everything that goes on in the world (including myself) like a rat running around in a maze. I had wished that I would be part of that rat, instead of standing tall and away, looking down, examining yet disconnected.

Morrie has taught me a great lesson, and that is just to be myself and be sensitive. Connect with people, understand people, and most important of all listen to people. You might be surprised with what you hear and feel when you actually stay within the moment with another person and concentrate all of your presence with them.

Anyways, thank you for reading my post, and give all of the credits to Morrie Schwartz and Mitch Albom, because without them, a part of me would be missing.

Remember this: Love each other or die

Note: Morrie did consecutive interviews with Ted Koppel, in which he has used the national television opportunity to spread his knowledge of dying and wisdom of living.

You can see the videos from youtube:

• Morrie Interview
  

Related Posts:

• Why You Shouldn’t Suppress Your Emotions
• Comic Lesson #8 : Don’t Get Too Attached To Things