Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson

4.5

I first encountered Tuesdays with Morrie as a play at an off-off-Broadway theater at a charming little church in Manhattan's East Village. While the production was small, the cast loomed large, with Tony Award winner Len Cariou playing Morrie, the beloved Sociology professor dying of ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease, who meets weekly with his former student Mitch Albom to discuss his philosophy of life.

Cariou's acting like Morrie's teaching was an act of love, and he captured the spirit of this brave man's last months with such nuance and compassion that I wasn't sure if I wanted to read the book. I wanted to hold on to Cariou's Morrie as my Morrie.

The Morrie of the book is, of course, the Morrie of the play, and
reading allowed me to show more interact more deeply with Morrie's ideas about the world, American culture, marriage, family, love, fear of aging, death, grief, and forgiveness. There is much wisdom in these pages. I was especially moved by his ideas on relationships and death.

"As long as we can love each other and remember the feeling
of love we had, we can die without really going away.
Death ends a life, not a relationship." show less

(4) I read this for something related to work, but I am so glad I did. I remember this in real time in the late 1990's and the 'Nightline' episodes or at least I think I do. I think it first raised my awareness about ALS although I would have just become a doctor then. Anyway, Morrie was lovely. I can't get over the image of him dancing by himself with his eyes closed with a towel around his neck in nightclubs as an older man, alone. I can't shake the almost cartoonish sentimental idea of a little bird on your shoulder asking you "Is this the day that you die?" This book in many ways should seem too precious or twee, except that it doesn't. It just seems honest.

What struck me most is something that Morrie did not come up with and that show more I have been exposed to before - the Buddhist notion of indulging in an emotion or an experience fully in order to more easily detach from it. It is hard to get your mind around that concept - I have been exposed to the concept now enough times that it finally makes some sense to me - especially the way Morrie and Mitch presented it. You can only be truly happy if you are not too attached to anything; including life. Other things that the book impressed upon me: Mindfulness, intentionality with everything you do. The rejection of traditional accolades, accomplishments, possessions -- how liberating.

Anyway, on the surface, a small, quickly read, tear-jerker that is engagingly constructed but the book is almost like a spell - the unadorned prose seems simple and straightforward - but before you know it - you are changed, thinking and living just a bit happier and better. show less

When I was around the age of 18 - the age of majority in Germany - I felt like I had broken through some magical barrier to adulthood. (I hadn’t.)

Now, I felt, it was my sacred duty (it wasn’t) to find out about - imagine a drum roll if you will - nothing lesser than the meaning of life itself. (Didn’t find it.)

Young me contacted the most well-meaning, wisest and awe-inspiring people I knew (not my parents) and asked them indirectly what the meaning of life is. I think I received exactly one answer and that went like “You’ll have to find out for yourself.”. It took me about 20 years to figure that one out:

There is no “meaning of life”. There is just what we figure out we want to do with our lives and how we live it. I show more have a vague idea for myself but I’m still figuring it out and I think the “figuring it out” part matters much more than the result - especially since for me, said result is always changing. Not in substance but in nuances.

Along comes a book whose author states:

“The subject was The Meaning of Life. It was taught from experience.”

As if that wasn’t pretentious enough in itself, we all have to figure it out for ourselves. And who is either Mitch Albom or Morrie to judge that “So many people walk around with a meaningless life.”?

Albom isn’t a great writer either: His simple style and his child-like adoration of Morris Schwartz drives him to try writing his idol into a pseudo-religious transcendent figure:

“And the things he was saying in his final months on earth seemed to transcend all religious differences.”

I’m sorry, I can buy into Morrie having been a very kind and interesting person but to basically glorify him like that cannot do any person justice.

In its entirety, “Tuesdays with Morrie” feels like a collection of anecdotes, the glorification of the mundane and stating the obvious. Beyond its inherent merit of paying its subject’s medical bills, it wasn’t worth reading for me.


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Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher, or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, helped you see the world as a more profound place, gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it.For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly twenty years ago.Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded, and the world seemed colder. Wouldn't you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you, receive wisdom for your busy life today the way you once did when you were younger?Mitch Albom had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older show more man's life. Knowing he was dying, Morrie visited with Mitch in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final "class": lessons in how to live.Tuesdays with Morrie is a magical chronicle of their time together, through which Mitch shares Morrie's lasting gift with the world. show less

Having seen on TV a professor of his from sixteen years ago who is now dying, a successful sports writer gets in touch to write a book about how much more important relationships are than money and thus make lots of money.

Perhaps an overly cynical summary, but I can recognise that the book has touched a cultural nerve and led to important conversations while myself finding it full of platitudes which skidded to a halt every time it came close to developing in an interesting direction.

Haven't had a book move me to tears in a long time, this one did.

This small little book is a marvelous testament to the human spirit. Here was a man, a philosophy professor, who was literally dying inch by inch in his body and yet his spirit was indomitable. As his life was shrinking away from ALS, Morrie spent his time explaining to his former student what was important in life and what wasn't. His teaching was spiritual yet realistic. Love, according to Morrie, was the most significant act and forgiveness of self - well, according to him " for all the mistakes you've made, for all the things you did you shouldn't have, for all the things you should have done, don't get stuck on your regrets."

The lesson he was teaching is one that is show more hard to learn, but definitely worthwhile to hear.

"The last class of my old professor's life took place once a week in his home by a window in his study where he could watch a small hibiscus plant shed its pink flowers. The class met on Tuesdays, no books were required. The subject was the meaning of life. It was taught from experience. The teaching goes on."

I don't usually read books like this but I'm definitely glad I read this one. I learn a few important items. show less

[4.5] admittedly, i am not usually one for non-fiction, and because of that i don't really read a lot of it, but i loved this!! it was simple, and contained some thought-provoking passages / quotes, all while delivering the book's primary message; so much so i kept having to remind myself that this wasn't made up!! i think the way this story was told really worked well, and it did make me feel as if i knew these people personally (or wish that i actually did 🥲). a short and simple read, but one containing so much joy and wisdom, and something everyone could benefit from picking up.