HW 23 - Illness & Dying Book, Part 2

Title, Author, publisher, and publishing date:

Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom. Published by DoubleDay in 1997.

Precis:
Mitch visits Morrie every tuesday.Throughout the visits Morrie talks to Mitch about life and how to live in life. Mitch brings a recorder to record their conversations so Mitch won't forget the conversations when Morrie dies. With all the insights that Morrie gives to Mitch; Mitch takes the advice and questions things that he sees. Mitch acts a personal mentor and parent in order to make Mitch notice things a lot more.

Quotes and Responses:

"Mitch," he said, " the culture doesn't encourage you to think about such things until your about to die."(pg.64)

Response: Morrie is stating that the world and people around us doesn't teach us how to deal with a lot of things that life throws at us until we reach our golden years and start to ponder about the end of our lives. That's when he go through depression(most of us) and think about what we should've done differently in order to live our lives happier.

"It's what everyone worries about, isn't it? What if today were my last day on earth?" He studied my face, and perhaps he saw an ambivalence about my own choices."(pg.64)

Response: When Morrie stated this to Mitch it made Mitch realize a lot more than usual. As Morrie told Mitch about it being his last day on earth, Mitch started thinking about his choices that he made throughout his life and just sat there and thought about it. Morrie is just making Mitch realize a lot more about life instead of him following the cultures social norm. Which is forget about the end of your time until you get close to dying.

" But there are days where I am depressed. Let me not decieve you. I see certain things going and I feel a sense of dread. What am I going to do without my hands? What happens when I can't speak? Swallowing, I don't care so much about - so they feed me through a tube, so what?" (pg.70)

Response: Morrie starts thinking about the end of his life a lot more during the interview with Koppel again. He starts thinking about the ultimate end of his hand movements and him becoming mute and not be able to speak. This is why he is teaching Mitch a lot about life now before it becomes to late, and then Mitch will start thinking like Morrie is during his current interview with Koppel.

At first I thought this book was going to be like a boring life story of some old guy, but as I continued to read the book more I began to realize that it was more than a life story but a story of a student and his professor and how we should treasure life a lot more before we die. Throughout the book Morrie states a lot of good views and points that I take into consideration, like when Morrie said that we don't realize a lot of things because culture doesn't encourage us until we die. When I came upon the quote I noticing how true Morrie was when he mentioned it to Mitch. People in the world don't take death serious until we grow old and hit our golden years and then we start to think about ourselves dying and what we are going to do before we die, and how our family is going to deal with us dying and will they miss us. There are a lot of different things that run through people's lives as they get ill or grow old. So we should live life more meaningful before it becomes to late.