Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
I began this book with some expectation. I had read Mitch Albom's The Five People you Meet in Heaven, finding it interesting and challenging. It was fiction, but Tuesdays with Morrie is non-fiction, a memoir of 14 Tuesdays that Mitch spent meeting and interviewing his old sociology university lecturer, Morrie Schwartz. Morrie is dying from Lou Gehrig's disease, and this is his final teaching series before his death.
During those conversations they cover the topics of the world, feeling sorry for yourself, regrets, death, family, emotions, the fear of ageing, money, how love goes on, marriage, culture, forgiveness, the perfect day, and goodbyes.
In some ways Albom sets this book up as how to die well, but in the process he discovers also how to live well.
There is much wisdom in these pages. Morrie is a likeable, knowledgeable guy who has many similarities with Jesus: he laughs a lot, loves people, is touched by music and nature, can see beyond the sham to the heart of things, knows that money and power and status don't bring meaning, really focuses on the other during conversation…
However, what is missing from these pages is a genuine encounter with the spiritual world. It's hard to know if this is due to Morrie, or whether Mitch has put his interpretation on the conversation. Morrie is a Jew, but he only mentions God once in all the conversations, a passing reference to a hope for heaven. Most of the focus is on this life.
Morrie does reference Buddhism quite heavily. There is a long discussion of the idea of detachment, that is, learning not to desire things, freeing us to be less selfish and more loving.
That is when I realised what I find disturbing about this book.
This "pick and choose" mentality to spirituality actually fails to acknowledge the full requirements of any religious system. It is a very common technique of spiritual gurus such as Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra.
What is usually missing are the discipline aspects: the full self-denial, the awareness of sin and seeking of forgiveness, the acceptance of suffering as part of life. Morrie at least cannot deny the latter.
The other aspect that is disturbing is the construction of a philosophical basis for meaning that excludes any reliance on a transcendent being. The focus is on self, and answers from within, and growth from within. There are no external guidelines that need to be referred to or addressed.
Finally, there is a denial of eternal consequences for spiritual choices in this life.
Morrie's one reference to God goes like this:
Morrie rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. "I'm bargaining with Him up there right now. I'm asking Him, "Do I get to be one of the angels?'"
It was three weeks later that he succumbed to the disease.
I suspect that Morrie did a lot more thinking about God and the state of his soul and eternal life than is recorded in this book. He had a drawn-out sickness, and the small grace of time to consider such questions.
In the end, this book is a little too sentimental, a little too sickly sweet. New York Times' reviewer Bruce Weber points out that there is a misquote of poet WH Auden in the book. Morrie's slogan is "Love each other or perish" but the actual quote (from a poem titled 1st September, 1939 - the first day of WW2) is "We must love one other or die." Weber says in context "it resonates with fear, growth and apocalypse, not just friendly admonition and personal growth."
The difference, Weber says, is the difference between poetry and a motto cross-stitched on a cushion.
I think the same way about the rest of the book. I prefer the substance and completeness of the message of the Bible, of the hope offered through Jesus, to the wise sayings of Morrie, as heart-warming as they are.
