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Final lessons with Professor Morrie Schwartz – Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

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Tuesdays with Morrie is a book about life lessons with Professor Morrie Schwartz during the last days of his life. We get to follow his journey as he approaches his death, his weekly meetings with former student Mitch Albom, his story growing up, their heartfelt dialogues and finally, the last Tuesday when they met for a heartbreaking farewell.

Morrie is diagnosed with a debilitating illness, Lou Gehrig’s disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which progressively disables him, and eventually takes his life. Mitch Albom returns every Tuesday to visit him and learns from him important life lessons over his remaining days.

Even though Morrie suffered as a result of the crippling disease, requiring help from his caregivers for the activities of daily living, he lived his remaining life with dignity and showed compassion, giving his attention to his friends, family and strangers who faced difficulties in their life. He had shown that he was worthy of his suffering, while his body decayed, his character shown brightly.

Sometimes Morrie mourns his predicament. He would cry if he needed it, but he chooses to focus his thoughts on the good things still in his life, on the people visiting him, on their stories and on Tuesday when he gets to meet Mitch. Many people spent much of their waking hours feeling sorry for themselves. It would be useful to put a daily limit on self-pity and get one with the day.

What regrets does Morrie have once he knew of his imminent death? He commented that their culture does not encourage people to think about such things till they are about to die. People are only concerned with egotistical things, career, money, status, little things just to keep moving. People don’t get into the habit of looking at our lives and asking is that all I want? Is something missing?

Morrie talks about how to be more prepared for death by following what the Buddhist do. Have a little bird on your shoulder that asks: “Is today the day I die?” Once you have learnt how to die, you learn how to live. Most people live as if they are sleepwalking, do things that we automatically think we have to do and don’t experience the world fully. Facing death changes that as it strips away all the stuff and you focus on the essentials.

The great poet, Auden, wrote: “love each other or perish“. The importance of having a family lies in the foundation it lays for people to stand on, being the support, love, care and concern from a family. Without love, we are birds with broken wings. Knowing that your family watches over you gives “spiritual security”, and nothing else gives that, no matter how much money or fame a person have. There is no substitute for the experience of raising children and for the responsibility over another human being.

Buddhists say don’t cling on to things as everything is impermanent. Morrie believes in detaching himself from his experience. To do so, you have to let the emotion penetrate you fully to be able to leave. Any emotion that you choose not to experience fully, such as grief for a loved one, pain from a deadly illness, love for a woman, you cannot detach yourself from them as you’re too busy being afraid of the pain, the grief and the vulnerability that loving entails. Only by fully experiencing the emotion can you recognize it and detach yourself from it.

People put values in the wrong things which results in a disillusioned life. The society brainwash people to believe that more money is good, owning things is good, more commercialism is good, but you cannot substitute material things for love, tenderness, comradeship. As a person is dying, no money nor power will give you the love you’re looking for, no matter how much of them you have. A meaningful live is one where you devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to the community, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.

How we think, what we value, we have to choose for ourselves and not let society decide for us. Things such as women not being thin enough, men not being rich enough, not being able to walk or wipe your ass due to illnesses, there is nothing innately embarrassing about them. It is what culture makes you believe in, and one shouldn’t believe in it.

Human beings’ biggest deficit is short-sightedness. The inability to see one’s potential, what one could be and self-actualize. People are more similar than different. We all have the same beginning (birth) and the same ending (death). Hence, by building a family, invest in relationships and building a community of people of who you love and who love you, being compassionate, taking responsibility for each other, these will make the world a better place. For we “love each other or perish.“

As Morrie’s health declines, he spoke about forgiveness. Forgive yourself before you die, then forgive others. By making peace with dying, only could one do the hard thing of making peace with life. Even though the illness slowly took his life, his love lived on in the hearts of people he had touched and lives he had nurtured. Death ends a life, not a relationship.

May Professor Schwartz rest in peace and much gratitude to Mitch for compiling the final lessons learnt with Professor Schwartz.

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A Seagull’s Search For Meaning – My thoughts on Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach

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Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a short story by Richard Bach which teaches one the meaning of life, the actualization of one’s potential. Most importantly the lessons of forgiveness, kindness and loving others and helping them to actualize themselves. I can’t recommend it enough, it is a beautiful short story and makes me think deeply on the meaning of life.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull was unlike any other seagull. He had a passion for flying and a deep desire to learn the techniques of flying. As a self-taught seagull, his family disapproved of his flying, often berating him that he should be searching for food instead, and that the reason he could fly is to eat.

Days passed as Jonathan practiced and successfully maneuvered a difficult technique, flying and turning at terminal velocity, yet when he landed he was called to Stand to Center, which was meant only for great shame or great honour. Jonathan was cast out of the gull society to the Far Cliffs for his irresponsibility. He had violated the dignity and tradition of the Gull family. In a world filled with unknowns and unknowable, the seagulls existed to feed and to survive as long as possible.

Jonathan spent the rest of his days in solitude but continued to learn to fly with greater control. He discovered that boredom, fear and anger are the reasons for the short life of seagulls and being free from these, he lived a long life.

As he passed away and was guided to heaven by two gulls. Here he met other seagulls who were like him. The most important thing in life was to reach perfection in what they loved most to do, which was flying. He continued to practice flight and learned from the Elder Gull, Chiang. Chiang taught Jonathan about perfection. Heaven can be reached by reaching perfection. Perfection does not have limits, it is a state of being there.

The gulls who dislike perfection, and fly for the sake of travel goes slowly, while those who put aside travel for the sake of perfection goes anywhere instantly. Thus, place and time are meaningless and heaven is neither a place or time, but a state of perfection. To fly as fast as thought, to anywhere, the trick was for Jonathan to stop seeing himself trapped in a limited body, with performance that could be plotted on a chart. The trick was his true nature lived in perfection, everywhere at once across time and space.

Chiang also taught Jonathan to keep working on love. Jonathan decided to return to the Far Cliffs to teach the other outcasts and his flock. On his return, he taught Fletcher Seagull, also an outcast, that despite being harshly treated with injustice, forgiving them and helping them to understand was a sign of true love. Practice to see the good in everyone of them and to help them to see the good in themselves was the meaning of love.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a short story with many ideas that are also found in Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Viktor Frankl talks about responsibleness as the main essence of existence, where one imagine first that the present has occurred and he has the ability to change and amend it. Jonathan was cast out of the Flock due to his irresponsibility, for not adhering to the tradition of finding food and survival as a way of life. By choosing to be irresponsible, he ceased to exist as a member of the flock.

Viktor Frankl also mentions the meaning of love in Man’s Search for Meaning. To love a person, he sees the essential traits in him, and also the potential not actualized but yet ought to be actualized. The loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. This is clearly seen in Jonathan Livingston Seagull. By forgiving them, Jonathan was able to see the good in the Flock and returns to existence as he taught them how to fly and to see the good in themselves. Essentially, he loved the Flock and makes them aware of the potential within themselves that could be actualized and to find that this is meaning to life, more than just finding food and fighting.

In logotherapy, Viktor clarifies that a man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life. This true meaning is to be discovered in the world, rather than within the man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. The true meaning to life is always directed to something or someone other than the self, it can be a meaning to fulfil or a person to encounter, or as Viktor calls it “self-transcendence of human existence“. The aim of self-actualization is not attainable in that as the more one strive for it, the more he would miss it, and is possible only as a side effect of self-transcendence.

Jonathan was able to exist beyond his limited body, by understanding the meaning of kindness and love and reaching a state of perfection. Through love and kindness, he was able to transcend across time and space.