Discovering at last Tuesdays with Morrie

Discovering a TV movie version of Tuesdays with Morrie

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            I took up blogging a couple of years ago. I suppose at times I imagine myself a worthy commentator. At times I realize I am simply someone with a computer and an access to a blogging site. The sort of blogger I would like to become is one who is honest, informed, and yearns to provide a table around which to discuss matters of life. I believe I have the talent but I am increasingly learning there is so much need to add diligence in learning the information and the art form necessary to turn that wish into reality.

            If you are an adult, that remembers the years of your childhood - you might remember how each year was monumental as if a lifetime passed before the next year made its way into your life. Then as an adult it became so amazing how the years and then the decades seem to move so quickly from a distant future imagined, to a brief present moment to be experienced to a past that has so quickly become a more distant past than we can imagine. It seems it took me forever from being born in the mid 1950's to being an adult listening to Cindy Lauper in the 1980's and such a brief moment until I heard one of her songs and was reminded that this was more than thirty years ago. It is hard to realize how the days of our lives on this side of eternity are so swiftly passing us by.

            It seemed like a couple of years ago when I thought about buying a book called Tuesdays with Morrie. It was one of those many books I passively thought I would eventually purchase and read. Recently I saw a made for TV movie version of "Tuesdays with Morrie". In my mind the book was written four or five years ago, but then I discovered that the movie had been made in 1999. The thirty-something year old Hank Azaria who played Mitch Albom was now in his fifties, and Jack Lemmon who had played the Morrie Scwartz role had passed away in 2001. The years are passing away so quickly these days.

            A made for TV movie seldom can pass for classic art. But perhaps this was the time in my life made for me to see this movie. I’ve watched it three times this week. I will with more intention determine to read the actual book. The Morrie Scwartz presented to us by Jack Lemmon would tell us that we don’t know how to live until we know how to die. We don’t do ourselves a favor by refusing to think about death or imagining it is too morbid a subject to think about. In the movie Lemmon tells us how a Buddhist imagined a little bird on his shoulder so that every morning he would ask the little bird, “Is this the day I die?” I suppose that might be a morbid practice. But on the other hand would we live so complacently if we truly realized that instead of having all the time in the world, we really understood how the years of our lives are passing us by in a blur. Would we forever put off that vacation to the natural beauty we always wanted to see? Would we continue to fail to tell that special person how much they have meant? Would we put off to another day that dream of the one accomplishment we have always wanted to do before slipping away into eternity? If the imaginary little bird were there saying to us, "Maybe today, maybe soon, maybe in twenty years, but if you thought it today what would you want to make sure you got done today? If you thought it was in five years what would you begin to do that might take five years to accomplish? Wouldn't that help you look back with joy that living that way you were able to pack in so much more that really meant something than if you had simply told yourself that lie that you have all the time in the world?" What if a little bird upon our shoulders were to tell us that in the morning?

            There were questions in the movie that ought often to be asked. There were questions like “What is wrong with being number two?” For me as a blogger I have quickly learned that I have thoughts that are read by only a few people. I receive an occasional encouraging comment but my words are not the hot topic of the day. But I like writing. So now I am moved to ask myself how I can become a better writer, a more informed writer, someone who makes better use of my medium. I will work on those things until I believe it is time for me to write no more.

A photograph of Morrie Schwartz; who helped mentor us about death and life

 

            I believe that all of us would do well to have a Morrie Schwartz sort of mentor to remind us that we can hardly begin to live without figuring out how to die. Death is there. Death is not a morbid reality – it is simply a reality. The morbid reality is that we often believe the lie that we have all the time in the world. Living complacently because of that lie is what is morbid. Morrie Schwartz had a message for us based on a W. H. Auden poem. Perhaps the whole movie revolved around these lines pulled out of an Auden poem:

            All I have is a voice to undo the folded lie, …The lie of authority whose buildings grope the sky: … No one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice to the citizen or the police; we must love one another or die.”

            There it is – we must love one another or die. In Auden’s poem and in Schwartz’s view of the life lived by having learned to die there is but one objective in life – to love one another or die. It is a simple purpose for life, but perhaps it is the only purpose comprehensive enough to fill with meaning and purpose the experiencing of every moment and event that we will experience under the created sun.

            If you have found anything in this blog worthwhile do yourself a favor and read the following article from the Boston Globe written twenty years after Morrie’s battle with ALS began to be documented in 1995, the same year in which he died in November … https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/2015/03/15/nearly-years-after-his-death-morrie-schwartz-lives/58nvyoUXyn4ykC9RPAjLUO/story.html