I don't normally post things unrelated to soccer, but this is a super read, especially if you know of someone with this condition or have read this book. Good life lesson!
By MITCH ALBOM - Detroit Free Press
Ten years ago, I sat with a literary agent and wondered whether a little book called “Tuesdays With Morrie” was going to hurt my sportswriting career.
“What do you mean ‘hurt’?” he said.
“Well,” I said, “it’s about a dying professor and the meaning of life. What if I go into locker rooms now and athletes start making fun of me, calling me soft?”
He thought for a second, then waved a dismissive hand.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “nobody’s gonna read it.”
Ten years ago. I was a sportswriter then. I am a sportswriter now.
But everything else has changed.
My agent was wrong. People read the book. Oh, not at first. At first, you couldn’t find it. The story of my beloved old college teacher, Morrie Schwartz, who was dying from ALS, was something I wrote to help pay his medical bills. A labor of love. And initially it was published that way. About 20,000 books were printed — total — and I had visions of giving them away from the trunk of my car.
Today, there are 14 million copies in print around the world.
And I am still trying to figure it out.
“Everyone knows they’re going to die,” Morrie says, “but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently.”
So we kid ourselves about death, I ask?
“Yes. But there’s a better approach. To know you’re going to die and to be prepared for it at any time.”
How can you be prepared to die?
“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 turns his head to his shoulder as if a bird were there now.
“Is today the day?” he says.
People ask me all the time if Morrie were always that smart, or if he only became enlightened when he received his death sentence. The truth is, Morrie, even back in college, was brilliant, iconoclastic and funny. He was a small, silver-haired wizard, with big ears, crooked teeth and the wisdom to know that people counted more than money, love more than fame, compassion more than accomplishment.
He was one of those teachers who experimented with different things — teaching outdoors, inviting students to his home, “trust exercises” in which you fall down backward trusting someone will catch you.
And he was really big into emotion.
“One day, Mitch, I’m gonna make you cry,” he would say.
“Yeah, yeah,” I would mock.
“Yeah, yeah,” he would mock back.
People think that Morrie and I only discussed deep, serious subjects. But mostly, on those Tuesdays in his study with the little hibiscus plant near the window, we teased each other. Even the phone call that brought us together again began with a little dig.
Remember, I had lost touch with Morrie while chasing my journalism career. Sixteen years, and we hadn’t spoken a word. My fault, of course. I was too interested in success to remember the people who enabled me to pursue it.
By accident one night, I saw Morrie on ABC’s “Nightline,” talking to Ted Koppel about dying. Shocked and ashamed, I decided to call Morrie. Say hello. Say I was sorry. That’s all it was going to be. One phone call. Ease my guilt. No visits. No life-changing education. No book.
But back at Brandeis University, I used to call Morrie “Coach,” a nickname I made up, and when I called his house after 16 years and he said, “Hello?” I cleared my throat and I said, “Professor Schwartz, my name is Mitch Albom. I was a student of yours in the ’70s. I don’t know if you remember me.”
And this is the first thing he said:
“How come you didn’t call me ‘Coach’?”
A little dig.
And I was on my way back.
His legs are useless. His arms can barely move. I need to turn his head to the side so he can look at me. Yet he is thinking so deeply, so clearly, about everything.
“Look, I can’t go shopping,” he says. “I can’t put out the garbage. I can’t take care of the bank accounts. But I can take care of and look at what I think is important in life, because I have both the time and the impulse now to do that.”
So, I say, the key to life is finding someone else to take out the garbage?
“Ha ha,” he says.
Making him laugh feels like the most important thing I can do.
The truth is, I wasn’t very comfortable around Morrie at the beginning. Watching him drool water when he tried to drink, the way his head listed to the side like a dead weight, the droopy flesh of his aged body, it all made me uncomfortable. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis turns you into a useless husk, needing to be carried from place to place. Someone even wiped Morrie’s rear end when he went to the bathroom. But Morrie was not easily embarrassed.
“Pay no attention to this body,” he told me, “it’s not me. It’s the carton I was shipped in. Look in my eyes. I’m still here. Don’t treat me like I’m already dead.”
I have learned to do that now. In the 10 years since the book came out, I have met countless people with ALS, MS, cancer, AIDS, people whose exterior has been altered dramatically. I have learned to look in the eyes, not the face, to listen to the soul, not the voice.
As I’ve aged myself, I realize how much time we spend primping our headlights, windshields, tires and doors, and how very little time we spend on our engines, on our souls.
Morrie taught me that. I hope to never forget it.
