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.