Kaleidoscope Words

Tuesdays With Morrie – a story of friendship, life, and death

“Death ends a life, not a relationship.”

Have you lost track of someone who made a big impact in your life? Is it someone close to your heart? A non-relative who treated you as part of his family?

Maybe it was a colleague, a friend, or a mentor. Someone who helped you discover the world in a different perspective, lead you when were searching, and guided you to make your way to the right path.

Does someone familiar pops into your mind? Wouldn’t you like to see that person again?

As for Mitch Albom, that person was his favorite professor, Morrie Schwartz. Mitch was lucky to have the chance to reunite with his old friend. A little bit late though, he rediscovered his once love-to-dance professor in the last months of his life. Time has passed, and the disease (known as ALS or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) withered Morrie’s body, but to Mitch, he’s still the man he’s looking up to. In the last moments of Morrie’s life, he was able to do his first love – teaching, but this time it’s about life and death. Indeed, he’s a “teacher until the end.”

“Tuesdays with Morrie” is a story of friendship, death, and life’s greatest lesson.

“So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important. This is because they’re chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.”

“Accept what you are able to do and what you are not able to do”

“Dying is not synonymous to useless.”

“People are only mean when they’re threatened.”

“Love is how you stay alive, even after you are gone.”

“Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.”

“We put our values in the wrong things. And it leads to very disillusioned lives.”

“A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.”

“You cannot substitute material things for love or gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship.”

“If you’re trying to show off for people at the top, forget it. They will look down at you anyhow. And if you’re trying to show off for people at the bottom, forget it. They will only envy you. Status will get you nowhere. Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone.”