Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Tuesdays With Morrie


Reflections on Tuesdays With Morrie—Pages 1-70.
            In moments of extreme emotions, the inward man or woman is revealed.  Who we truly are—in all of its splendor or sorrow—is expelled from the confines of the soul for all to behold.  Some emotions are certainly permissible such as the sudden or hasty frustrations brimming from the boiling moment.  Nevertheless, there are undoubtedly moments of understanding.  Such an instant arose with Morrie, when told he had Lou Gehrig’s disease. 

            “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 had asked himself.
            “He would not wither.  Hew ould not be ashamed of dying.
            “Instead he would make 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 me in my slow and patient demise.  Watch what happens to me.  Learn with me.
            “Morrie would walk that final bridge between life and death, and narrate the trip” (p. 10). 
           
            Always, in the most sallow darkness, we can find reasons to persist.  We can find reasons to endure. 

            “There are some mornings when I cry and cry and more for myself.  Some mornings, I’m so angry and better.  But it doesn’t last too long.  Then I get up and say, ‘I want to live…’ (p. 21). 

            This exemplary decision can and should be reciprocated in each of our lives.  Rather than moping in the mire of melancholy, if we come to accept our lot and press forward, we shall be endowed with a bestowal of piercing perception.  This perception shall penetrate the woes of the present and allow us to see life for what it truly is.  Then with resolution and resolve we declare to the world: “Your best has not bested me!  Keep your woes, keep your pity, and keep your sour sulking sadness!  I need them not, for I have problems enough of my own!” 
            Although our physical state be filled with pain, why force this anguish upon our mental capacities.  Often the suffering of body comes coupled with the shooting suffering of mind—but according to Morrie, we don’t have to accept it.  We can reject this poisonous plague, which if allowed, will engulf our entire world, enveloping all in grotesque black.
            Undeniably this is all easier on paper than it is in practice.  Without question, circumstance yields to men and women misery too immeasurable to bear.  Yet always there remains a part in which, we are still sovereign.  Our autonomy doesn’t flee at the sight of affliction—the two sit along side each other—autonomy only surrendering because it is easier.  Misery is easy, self-pity is facile, depression is effortless—rather they appear to be.

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