A Short Summary of “Tuesday with Morrie”: A Glimpse of the 14 Life Lessons
What’s Inside “Tuesday with Morrie”?
Tuesday with Morrie is a book consisting of 14 Tuesdays of the author’s visits to see his professor, Morrie, who was sentenced to death by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a disease that targets the neurological system. Going up against the clock, the professor wanted to give his last class about “Life’. Both the teacher and the student agreed to meet every Tuesday. Thus, every week, they would discuss issues that most people are facing in their daily life.
[ Note: Mitch Albom, the author, was the student who visited his professor. To avoid confusion, I referred Mitch as “the student” in the following article]
1st Tuesday: World
After agreeing to visit his professor every Tuesday, the student came as promised. He saw Morrie watching the news.
“You bother keeping up with the news?” he asked.
His professor shared his thoughts and feelings. It was because of his illness, he felt a closer connection to other people who also suffer. There was a sense of closure he never felt before he was sentenced to ALS.
The disease had taught him an important lesson.
“The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in…Love is the only rational act”
2nd Tuesday: Feeling Sorry About Yourself
On the second visit, the student asked if his professor felt sorry for himself. I mean, wouldn’t we pity ourselves when we got a severe disease?’
Morrie admitted it.
“Sometimes, in the morning. That’s when I mourn…But then I stop mourning.”
The student was confused,” Just like that?”
“I give myself a good cry if I need it. But then I concentrate on all the good things still in my life. I don’t allow myself any more self-pity than that. A little each morning, a few tears, and that’s all.”
That made the student think. “How useful it would be to put a daily limit on self-pity. Just a few tearful minutes, then on with the day.”
3rd Tuesday: Regrets
The student contemplated on whether his professor had any regrets the moment he knew he was going to die. Would he have done things differently?
Morrie did have. He said,” It’s what everyone worries about, isn’t it? What if today were my last day on Earth?”
“The culture doesn’t encourage you to think about such things until you’re about to die. We’re so wrapped up with egotistical things…so we don’t get into the habits of standing back and looking at our lives and saying. Is this all I want? Is something missing?”
“You need someone to probe you in that direction. It won’t just happen automatically.”
The student realised Morrie was the person who could help him. There were still lots of things that had been bothering not only himself, but also the rest of the world. So he finally made a list, topics to be discussed in the following weeks.
4th Tuesday: Death
Bringing the list, the student decided to ask first about death, because it’s a struggle faced by everyone.
“Everyone knows they are going to die, but refused to believe it. If we believe it, we would do things differently.”
Morrie’s main point was discussing how people were too drawn to material things, and things changed when people start facing death. But things would be better if people had given a thought about death without having to face death first.
“The truth is, Mitch. Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.”
5th Tuesday: Family
We all have many relatives: family, friends, colleagues. So why is family important? Here is what Morrie said about family.
“There is no foundation, no secure ground, upon which people may stand today if it isn’t the family. If you don’t have the support and love and caring and concern that you get from a family, you don’t have much at all. Love is so supremely important. As our great poet Auden said, ‘Love each other or perish.’”
6th Tuesday: Emotions
Morrie’s illness became worse. He coughed more and the student started to feel fear. But Morrie insisted on continuing on this last class about Life.
Morrie was learning how to detach himself from the negative experiences and emotions. He was afraid of death just like anyone else. But he had a way to deal with those negative emotions:
“If you hold back on the emotions — if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them — you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid. You’re afraid of the pain, you’re afraid of the grief. You’re afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails.”
“But by throwing yourself into these emotions…you experience them fully and completely. And only then you can say, ‘All right, I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now Ineed to detach from that emotion for a moment.”
7th Tuesday: Fear of Aging
The student remembered the giant billboards he saw in the airport. All the posters there were filled with young models, none of them past 35 years old. The world promotes youth and views ageing as a curse. A lot fear ageing, so as the student.
“You know what that reflects? Unsatisfied lives. Lives that haven’t found meaning. Because if you’ve found meaning in your life, you don’t want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to see more, do more.”
8th Tuesday: Money
Society has encouraged the flashiest and newest item. Trend is everything. Yet Morrie had a different thought about money along with all material things.
“There’s a big confusion in this country over what we want verses what we need. You need food, you want a chocolate sundae. You have to be honest with yourself. You don’t need the latest sports car, you don’t need the biggest house.”
“You know what really gives you satisfaction? Offering otheres what you have to give.”
9th Tuesday: How Love Goes On
There’s a point in most people’s lives when they think “will there be someone who remembers me after I die?” or “Even if I disappear, will people forget me instead?”
Morrie was sure people would remember him.
“I’ve got so many people who have been involved with me in close, intimate ways. And love is how you stay alive, even after you are gone.”
10th Tuesday: Marriage
Morrie asked his student to bring his wife on his next visit. It was a warm meeting, followed by their usual Life “class”.
Lots of people are struggling with marriage, whether it’s to get married, or after. Divorce is common nowadays. So the student wondered why and whether there are solutions to it.
Morrie answered that most people didn’t know who they were as a person nor they knew what they wanted in their partner. He gave several pieces of advice, that a couple must have similar values.
“And the biggest one of those values is the belief in the importance of marriage.”
11th Tuesday: Culture
The culture is an agreed set of behaviours, rules on how people should behave or act in the society. Despite being generally agreed, not all cultures benefit the livelihood of the society.
That’s why Morrie encouraged his student to create his own little subculture.
“Here’s what I mean by building your own little subculture. I don’t mean you disregard every rule of your community. But the big things — how we think, what we value — those you must choose yourself. You can’t let anyone — or any society — determine those for you.”
12th Tuesday: Forgiveness
The student wondered if Morrie had any regrets in life, which he wanted to say sorry for someone he had hurted in life before.
Morrie had one.
He once felt offended by a friend and declined the opportunity to reconcile. Unfortunately, his friend passed away before he had the opportunity to forgive him.
“It’s not just other people we need to forgive, Mitch. We also need to forgive ourselves. For all the things we didn’t do. All the things we should have done. You can’t get stuck on the regrets of what should have happened.”
13th Tuesday: The Perfect Day
The student asked his professor. What if you had that one day of being perfectly healthy?
Morrie answered,” I’d get up in the morning, do my exercises, have a lovely breakfast, go for a swim, then have my friends come for a nice lunch. I’d have them come for one or two at a time so we could talk about their familiees, their issues, talk about much we mean to each other. Then I’d like to go for a walk, in the garden. In the evening, we’d all go together to a restaurant with some great pasta and we’d dance the rest of the night. And then I’d go home and have a deep, wonderful sleep.”
That’s it?
“That’s it.”
The student was stunned with the simplicity of the answer, he felt quite disappointed. Morrie had been lying on the bed for few months, yet he only wanted all that?
But then he figured out that was the main point.
14th Tuesday: Good Bye
It was the last Tuesday. Morrie was in a poor and weak condition. He couldn’t speak much as talking itself was exhausting for him.
It was the day to say good bye. And Morrie taught the student how to say good bye.
Final Words
The article I wrote was simply to give a glimpse of the book and I hope it would motivate people to read it. It’s a very lovely book and the boundless life lessons can only be unlocked by reading the entire book. Tuesday with Morrie is an evidence that kindness and wisdom can be passed on even after death.
I would recommend this book to anyone seeking life wisdom, love and compassion.
