Jones' Jarbs
... Things to say
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Tuesday, April 18, 2006
70. J.A.R.B - Tuesdays with Morrie
I’ve finished the book “Tuesdays with Morrie” recently, and a few lessons, I think, are worth the blog.
“Morrie’s doctors guessed he had two years left.
Morrie knew it was less.
But my old professor had made a profound decision, one he began to construct the day he came out of the doctor’s office with a sword hanging over his head. Do I wither up and disappear, or do I make the best of my time left? He asked himself.
He would not wither. He would not be ashamed of dying. Instead, he would make his death his final project, the center point of his days. Since everyone was going to die, he could be of great value, right? He could be research. A human textbook. Study my in my slow and patient demise. Watch what happens to me. Learn from me. Morrie would walk that final bridge between life and death, and narrate the trip.
“The culture we have doesn’t make people feel good about themselves. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn’t work, don’t buy it.”
“Amazing” I thought. I worked in the news business. I covered stories where people died. I interviewed grieving family members. I even attended the funerals. I never cried. Morrie, for the suffering oh people half a world away, was weeping. Is this what comes at the end, I wondered? Maybe death is the great equalizer, the one big thing that can finally make strangers shed a tear for one another.”
“‘Mitch, you asked about caring people I don’t even know. But can I tell you the thing I’m learning most with this disease?’
‘What’s that?’
‘The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.’ His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Let it come in. We think we don’t deserve love, we think if we let it in we’ll become too soft. But a wise man named Levine said it right. He said, ‘love is the only rational act’”
“‘Everyone knows they’re going to die,’ he said again, ‘but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently.’
‘So we kid ourselves about death, I said.’
‘Yes. But there’s a better approach. To know you’re going to die, and to be prepared for it at any time. That’s better. That way you can actually be more involved in your life while you’re living it.’
‘How can you be prepared to die?’
‘Do what Buddhists do? Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, ‘Is today the day? Am I being the person I want to be?’
He turned his head to his shoulder as if the bird were there now.
‘Is today the day I die?’ He said.”
“When you learn to die, you learn how to live.”
“‘Mitch,’ he said, laughing along, ‘even I don’t know what ‘spiritual development’ really means. But I do know we’re deficient in some way. We are too involved in materialistic things, and they don’t satisfy us. The loving relationships we have, the universe around us, we take these things for granted.’
He nodded toward the window with the sunshine streaming in. ‘You see that? You can go out there, outside, anytime. You can run up and down the block and go crazy. I can’t do that. I can’t go out. I can’t run. I can’t be out there without fear of getting sick. But you know what? I appreciate that window more than you do.’
‘Appreciate it?’
‘Yes. I look out that window every day. I notice the change in the trees, how strong the wind is blowing. It’s as if I can see the time actually passing through that window pane. Because I know my time is almost done, I am drawn to nature like I’m seeing it for the first time.’
He stopped, and for a moment we both just looked out the window. I tried to see what he saw. I tried to see time and season, my life passing in slow motion. Morrie dropped his head slightly and curled it toward his shoulder. ‘Is it today, little bird?’ he asked. ‘Is it today?’”
“‘What I’m doing now,’ he continued, his eyes still closed, ‘Is detaching myself from the experience.”
‘Detaching yourself?’
‘Yes. Detaching myself. And this is important – not just for someone like me, who is dying, but for someone just like you, who is perfectly healthy. Learn to detach.”
He opened his eyes. He exhaled. ‘You know what the Buddhists say? Don’t cling to things, because everything is impermanent.’
‘But wait,’ I said. ‘Aren’t you always talking about experiencing life? All the good emotions, all the bad ones?
‘Yes.’
‘Well, how can you do that if you’re detached?’
‘Ah. You’re thinking, Mitch. Bet detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That’s how you are able to leave it.’”
“In the beginning of life, when we are infants, we need others to survive, right? And at the end of life, when you get like me, you need others to survive, right?’
His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘But here’s the secret: in between, we need others as well.”
“Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.” – Gandhi
“Love is how you stay alive, even after you die.”
“In the south American rainforest, there is a tribe called the Desana, who see the world as a fixed quantity of energy that flows between all creatures. Every birth must therefore engender a death, and every death bring forth another birth. This way, the energy of the world remains complete.
When they hunt for food, the Desana know that the animal they kill will leave a hole in the spiritual well. But that whole will be filled, they believe, by the souls of the Desana hunters when they die. Were there no men dying, three would be no birds or fish being born. I like this idea. Morrie likes it, too. The closer he gets to good-bye, the more the more he seems to feel we are all creatures in the same forest. What we take, we must replenish. ‘It’s only fair’ He says.”
“Forgive yourself, forgive others. Don’t wait, Mitch. Not everyone gets the time I’m getting. Not everyone is as lucky.”
“As long as we can love each other, and remember the feeling of love we had, we can die without ever really going away. All the love you created is still there. All the memories are still there. You live on – in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here.”
-Jones.
- Jones posted this bad boy on 3:40 PM
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