Homework #24: Reader Response 3

Albom, Mitch. Tuesdays with Morrie. New York: Doubleday, 1997. Print.

This section was mostly the process and final end of Morrie’s life.

“People are only mean when they’re threatened… and that’s what our culture does. That’s what our economy does. And when you get threatened, you start looking out only for yourself… It is all part of our culture” (P 154).  What Morrie is saying here is that we go on the defensive when we are attacked, which makes sense, but it comes out as aggressive or mean. I think that he’s absolutely in right that we as a society are constantly viewed as cruel or mean but only because we are always being threatened. This applies to the individual too. When people are threatened, other things seem to lose meaning and it becomes all about how we can threaten the other back. This results in aggressiveness and isolation – making it all about you. I agree with Morrie on this quote, but I don’t think that’s the only time when people are mean. Sometimes it can come from trying to hide their emotional feelings and trying to put up an emotionless front which can appear mean to most people.

“The big things – how we think, what we value – those you must choose yourself. You can’t let anyone – or any society – determine those for you” (P 155). I connected with this line a lot because I’ve often thought the same thing. What Morrie is saying is that we shouldn’t let the people or world around us determine what we should do, how we should act, or what we should love. They are our own decisions to make alone and they should be based on our own experiences.

“The problem, Mitch, is that we don’t believe we are as much alike as we are. Whites and blacks, Catholics and Protestants, men and women. If we saw each other as more alike, we might be very eager to join one big human family in this world, and to care about that family the way we care about our own” (P 156). What Morrie is saying here is that we all identify the differences between each other instead of just living with one another. We point out how we are all different and then make judgments based on those differences. If we pointed out how we were alike instead, then we might be able to care for one another the way we care for those we have most in common with. I agree with this statement because I’ve often thought that even if you are civil with people who are different from you, there is still a difference there, be it skin color, religion, or gender. If only we could overlook that difference, I think there would be much less hate in the world.

“Be compassionate and take responsibility for each other. If we only learned those lessons, this world would be so much better a place” (P 163). To me, this is how Morrie became so well loved by all in the first place. Even when he wasn’t dying, he still lived by this lesson with his students and with his family. I think that this is a lesson that is more instinctual than anything else because it’s hard to learn how to be compassionate towards someone if you haven’t been doing it your whole life, especially towards a stranger or acquaintance. To be able to sympathize with people who aren’t your closest friends and family is not something that most people can do easily. However, taking responsibility for each other is something that most people just don’t want to do because they are afraid of the consequences that might follow; or they just feel as if they don’t have to because it doesn’t apply to them. But it does in reality, because if that person can take responsibility for others, then they will get the same treatment. This is why Morrie said the world would be a better place if people lived by this lesson, because they would be more understanding of the problems around them and maybe then the problems could be solved. 

“If we know, in the end, that we can ultimately have that peace with dying, then we can finally do the really hard thing… Make peace with living” (P 173). This quote confused me a little which is why I wrote it down. I don’t understand how, if one is healthy, they can look ahead in life and say “I am eventually going to die and I accept that,” and then be able to live a better life. I also don’t understand what he means when he says: “make peace with living,” because to me, that means accept that you’re living which I think most people have done. If I were to paraphrase this I would say that it means, once you accept that you will eventually die and you can deal with it instead of fear it, then you can continue on with your life in a more meaningful way. In some ways I can agree with this – that we can live more thoroughly if we stop fearing death. But I also think that living more meaningful lives is not always the result of accepting death. 

“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 a part of nature. We think because we’re human we’re something above nature” (P 173). I personally love this quote. It points out all of the flaws that humans have and why we have them. I agree completely with this statement because I too think that we feel as if we are above nature and can avoid things that are supposed to happen naturally. I agree that we all fear death, but I also think it’s related to how we see death. There is unnatural death all around us – on TV, in movies. We can’t accept it when it’s real because we are used to telling ourselves it’s not when it’s on TV. It also connects back to our food. When we eat meat, we know that what we are eating used to be an animal that was killed. So when death comes for us, I think we subconsciously identify with those animals and it scares us that we have that in common with them.