Have you ever had a teacher who you have really admired and
loved? Someone who during your formative years has made you look at life
differently? Someone, whose words meant everything to you, someone who would
understand you completely? Someone who would look at you and see a raw but
precious gem? Someone who would love you not only for what you are but for what
you could become?
Lucky are some of us who had at one point found such
teachers to guide and lead us. This book is for those who had found such teachers
and then later went back to them after years and thanked them and for those who
have forgotten their teachers and for those who have not been fortunate enough
to have found such guides.
Mitch Albom’s “Tuesdays with Morrie”, is a beautiful book
about the unembarrassed love a teacher and pupil share. The book is about life
and how to ‘live’. It is about a healthy young man and a terminally ill old man
having conversations about living and dying. The book teaches how there is no
such thing as ‘too late’ in life.
The story is about Albom’s
teacher, or coach, Morrie Schwartz who is suffering from the Lou Gehrig’s
disease and Albom finds his way back to him after many years when he finds out
that his teacher is about to die soon. By then he is a busy man with a
successful career and has forgotten most of what Morrie had taught.
Aren’t we all like this? Do we really remember all that our
teachers, who were once our role models, told us? Some of us do, sometimes.
Most of us are too busy making a living to think of our lives or about living,
for that matter. How many of us have really gone back and thanked our school
teacher for all that he/ she had taught us?
Coming back to the story - just like in school, Mitch and
Morrie set up one day in a week to meet each other. Morrie tells Albom that he
would tell him how it is like to die. Their classes begin. Every Tuesday Albom
learns something from Morrie. His way of looking at life is very different and
helps Albom to sort out his own life better.
The book has 192 pages and leaves you pondering after you
finish reading it.
Excerpt:
“Whenever people ask
me about having children or not having children, I never tell them what to do, ”
Morrie said now, looking at a aphoto of his oldest son. “I simply say, “there is
no experience like having children.’ That’s all. There is no substitute for it.
Yu cannot do it with a friend. You cannot do it with a lover. If you want the
experience of having complete responsibility for another human being, and learn
to love and bond in the deepest way, then you should have children.”