I recently read a book titled “Tuesdays with Morrie”, a compilation of Prof. Morrie’s experiences in his life. In this book, Morrie talks about Death, Marriage, Forgiveness, Aging, Fear, Greed, Society etc. to his ex-student called Mitch.
I am sharing with you the first one Death in this blog and will share the rest of the topics in my subsequent blogs. From this book I happened to get a lot of insight on Life, ironically on Death. It’s not a regular book where you have very generic stuffs about life.
What is Life? It is a collection of fleeting moments. Some of these fleeting moments make lasting impressions on us. We carry certain perception on things like Fear, Aging, Family, and of course Death in our life. If we don’t have the right perspective about these aspects, we will ultimately put ourselves into a stressed environment and ultimately loosing clarity in life. I would say that the very life we have is just to have experiences not to accumulate anything and carry the burden. If we have the right perspective, then these experiences are wonderful to recollect and cherish.
With my thoughts about Life, I will highlight some of the wonderful thoughts of Prof. Morrie.
Before that, if you read the book title once again “Tuesdays with Morrie”, Mitch meets his professor, Morrie, on Tuesdays and gets the wealth of knowledge sharing from him. But, in India, Tuesday is not considered auspicious to begin a new venture, moving to new home or doing anything good for that matter. Paradoxical isn’t it?
Now, for the chapters:
Death:
For many of us it is a dreadful thing, something that is undesirable or thing that will happen only to others.
Extracts from the book on DEATH:
Morrie says, “Everyone knows they’re going to die, but nobody believes it. Yes. But there’s a better approach. To know you’re going to die, and to be prepared for it at any time. That’s better. That way you can actually be more involved in your life while you’re living.”
“Do what the Buddhists do. Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, ‘Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be?’”
I would say the above questions are really LIFE changing! It changes the entire perspective of LIFE and shakes the very basis on which we live. When we realize that we are going to die, suddenly your very perspective about life changes and you see things differently, respond differently amazing! You value systems change, you start respecting your relationship with your partner and others. Please try it out!!
If you REALLY want to understand LIFE you NEED to know the DEATH. If you know you are going to die in a few months from now, how will you want that death to be? Peaceful with your life’s mission fulfilled?
Morrie says “most of us all walk around as if we’re sleepwalking. We really don’t experience the world fully, because we’re half-asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do.”
Just to share my personal life examples. Two of my relatives passed away in the past one year - a father and a son. Father fought a long battle with life, rather death, for over a year and he was not able to talk or walk and in short, was dependent on others for everything like a child. Whereas, the son died within few days of brain hemorrhage. Father had enough time and opportunity to revisit his life. I truly believe that he would have thought about at least 1000 occasions where he could have responded differently and created better relationships. Whereas the son did not even know that he was dying. I learnt how I should live my life from their lives. If I have to die instantly, I want my life to be complete! Or even I have lie at the death bed, I should not repent on anything, rather I should be able to completely surrender to the reality.
Such a steady and mature mind sets is possible only when we are complete with all our relationships.
When I speak about, living a complete life, I cannot resist mentioning about the forum, conducted by Landmark Education, in which I recently participated. One of the important things that is stressed upon by the forum head is to Complete with relationships. That’s about Acknowledging or Appreciating or Apologizing as needed to live a free minded life.
See you soon with my next topic that deals with “Family”!
