Life's Greatest Lesson

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom; New York: Doubleday; 1997; pp. 192.

This is a story about a professor and his student. Or more precisely, about a professor as seen and also not seen by his student. Professor Morrie and his student Mitch met during Mitch's graduation days. They become friends. After graduation, Mitch promised Morrie that he would stay in touch. But as is often the case in life, Mitch drifted away.

Long after, he renews his contact with him, but the professor is now terminally ill. This story, however, is not about a poignant death, it is about an illuminating journey toward death. The whole big world of learning and thought that Morrie weaves over his imminent death turns death into a small incident. His ponderings over death, in fact, multiplies the significance of life. Death, in Morrie's view, is not an antonym of life; it is not a reverse force. Only death can truly reveal what life is and what we need to do here. Morrie says, 'It's natural to die. The fact that we make such a big hullabaloo over it is all because we don't see ourselves as part of nature. We think because we're human we're something above nature.'

When you read this book you don't need a lot of theories to understand the bane of materialism. The relentless chase and greed that materialism entails goes against the very core of our soul and we forget to stop and take a close look at life. Morrie observes that 'culture doesn't encourage you to think about such things until you're about to die. We're so wrapped up with egotistical things, career, family, having enough money, meeting the mortgage, getting a new car, fixing the radiator when it breakswe're involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going.' Such trillion small things even make us question the value of love. Morrie warns, 'Love each other or perish.'

The book abounds with such aphorisms. According to Morrie, if a person thought about death 'he would never do any work that exploited someone else, and he would never allow himself to make money off the sweat of others.' About our perennial problem of maintaining humility we are told, 'People are only mean when they're threatened.' For us, ageing usually means anxiety. Not for Morrie. He says, 'As you grow you learn more. If you stayed at twenty two, you'd always be as ignorant as you were at twenty two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It's growth. It's more than the negative that you're going to die, it's also positive that you understand you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.'

For me, the most striking fact about the book is that a teacher of Morrie's stature has to undertake such a journey to prove that he was truly a teacher. The journey is, no doubt, worth pursuing. True, Morrie's philosophy and perception of life draw exclusively on the American context. But then every revelationmust have its own location, and that should not be an impediment to Morrie's relevance for us in Bangladesh. However, I do need to point out one possible discrepancy. Morrie frequently reiterates 'When you're in bed you're dead.' Here, he perhaps is cautioning us against idleness, but this is brought into question by Morrie himself, whose aphorisms about life have been thought out while lying in bed.

Only few people can write stories the way Mitch does. He doesn't waste words. Economy and temperance are superbly interwoven. And yet, amazingly the untold is more resonant. Another surprising feature of the book is it remains far from being morbid, though it deals mostly with death. Mitch is able to give a touch of serenity to every single page. Let me say it in Morrie's style, read this book or regret it.

Zahid Akter teaches English at East West University.