Have you ever shivered a little before making any phone call? Ever put off a phone call or getting in touch with someone for many days, months or even years? That confrontation which we so dread, is often the confrontation we all most need.
This confrontation may be in different forms, sometimes it is with people you fear you have let down, sometimes its with ideas, sometimes its with self reconciliation. In this book, author takes us through his journey of confronting series of such ideas that we normally put off during day-to-day life. His teacher, Morrie, who is dying of ALS becomes his guide through the journey and helps him see things with a refreshingly different perspective.
Mitch is fairly successful professional, a self made sports journalist who has everything that takes to win in the world, skills, understanding, connections and hunger for even more success. He has a lady love in life too, whom he intends to marry sometime. He considers himself happy and when asked “Are you happy?” usually his reply would be, “I guess, I cannot complaint.” Though successful he struggles with finding meaning of life, purpose of existence and shies away from thoughts of death, sympathy, empathy and compassion. Until he met Morrie once more.
Morrie cuts through Mitch’s defenses with deft of an old lover, one after the other and helps Mitch face some of the bigger questions of life which he had been putting off until now in guise of getting more work, more money, more success. The fact that Morrie is suffering from ALS and is diagnosed to die in a few months, makes their journey even more poignant and inspiring.
Morrie reinforces some of the timeless truths which we all know but only some apply. He crusades against following advertised values, cautions against expecting that material things will yield us any solace, advises to keep close with family members and friends. However it is not so much what he says, but how beautifully he exemplifies all that he says makes this story wonderful. For example, when during a football match, when everyone in stadium was shouting - we are number-1 , we are number-1 - he got up and asked a rhetorical question to the crowd, “What’s wrong in being number-2?” Or his insistence on holding a living funeral for himself, because he wanted to hear the good things people had to say of him while he was alive and not after his death.
While it comes across as a book filled with bright spots Morrie doesn't feign positivity or happiness at all. When asked, if he laments his condition, he candidly answers that he often cries in morning for having this disease which is killing him slowly. As much as he is sad of his health, he never allows himself more than a few minutes of self-pity every morning, after that he thinks about the day ahead, all the people who he is going to meet today. Morrie’s daily quota of limited self pity is such a contrast to everyday cribbing we hear constantly from people around us about far more routine stuff than their life.
Another very inspiring aspect of Morrie’s character is that he gives everyone his complete attention. He defers phone calls when in an in-person conversation, and maintains a very doting eye contact with his audience despite his flailing health. In an age where personal space is so intruded with gadgets his was really an amazing example of how to go about talking to people in person.
Book is replete with such examples of everyday events that we often neglect and avoid. It also provides a new perspective towards death and shows a more welcoming, warm and friendly approach to that eternal truth of everyone’s life.
Like all great teachers, Morrie offers a lot to learn and think - his last class was on life, it had no textbook or curriculum, there were no exams and learning from that goes on for anyone who has been touched by this book.
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