This should not be a huge surprise.
It's impossible to read this book and say you didn't learn anything.
You learn to live life to the fullest with whatever time you have. You learn to tell everyone you love them. You learn to never judge and to listen fully when people talk to you.
I think I have learned more about life from the late Morrie Schwartz than I have from most of my elders. He had reason to be angry, having been diagnosed with such a terrible illness as Lou Gehrig's disease. But he was not angry. He was not bitter. He was loving and doing what he could to make the most of his limited time left on Earth.
He does say that a little bitterness is okay from time to time: "Grieve and mourn for yourself not once or twice, but again and again." At the same time, he does not believe in living all of one's life consumed with self-pity: "After you have wept and grieved for your physical losses, cherish the functions and the life you have left."
I have learned more about Tuesdays with Morrie than I have from any other textbook. Sure, I didn't learn anything academic, but I did learn about life, about family, and about love.
There are plenty of invaluable sayings from Morrie Schwartz, but if I typed them all, it could be the longest post I've ever done. So I will end this post with this quote: "It's not to late to . . . ask yourself if you really are the person, you want to be, and if not, who you want to be."
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