This is an amazing book! I just picked it up from the library the other day and devoured it. It's written by Mitch Albom, who's a sports writer. It's a true story of an older college professor who is dying from
ALS and is teaching some of life's greatest lessons to one of his dearest students, who is now all grown up. I just want to share some of the words from these pages that left an impression on me.
"The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in."
We all need teachers in our lives.
But there still seemed to be no clear answers. Do you take care of others or take care of your "inner child"? Return to traditional values or reject tradition as useless? Seek success or seek simplicity? Just Say No or Just Do It?
He ruled out law, because he didn't like lawyers, and he ruled out medicine, because he couldn't stand the sight of blood...It was only through default that the best professor I ever had became a teacher.
"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops." - Henry Adams
"Every day have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, '...Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be?' "
"Mitch, if you're trying to show off for people at the top, forget it. They will look down at you anyhow. And if you're trying to show off for people at the bottom, forget it. They will only envy you. Status will get you nowhere. Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone."
"We've got a form of brainwashing going on in our country. Do you know how they brainwash people? They repeat something over and over. And that's what we do in this country. Owning things is good. More money is good. More property is good. More commercialism is good. More is good. More is good. We repeat it-and have it repeated to us- over and over until nobody bothers to even think otherwise. The average person is so fogged up by all this, he has no perspective on what's really important anymore."
"Devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning. You notice...there's nothing in there about a salary."
"And love is how you stay alive, ever after you are gone."
"People are only mean when they're threatened...and that's what our culture does. That's what our economy does. Even people who have jobs in our economy are threatened, because they worry about losing them. And when you get threatened, you start looking out only for yourself. You start making money a god. It is all a part of this culture."
"We should be looking at our potential, stretching ourselves into everything we can become. But if you're surrounded by people who say 'I want mine now,' you end up with a few people with everything and a military to keep the poor ones from rising up and stealing it."
"Death ends a life, not a relationship."
Watch the series of interviews Morrie did with Ted Koppel:
http://youtu.be/dcnL2o385Gw
