Thursday, Apr. 22, 2004 - 9:40 a.m.
I'm tired. I haven't been getting great sleep lately. There are lots of factors t this, but whatever.
I finally finished reading Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom. It's a book I'd been told to read quite a whie ago, but just now got around to it.
it's a quick read, but it's very nice and inspiring. I want to be like that old guy, full of love, sharing it and loved.
Here are some parts that stood out:
"the culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. We're teaching the wrong things. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it. Create your own."
"'Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but are bound to do something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn't. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted.'
'A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. And most of us live somewhere in the middle.'
Sounds like a wrestling match, I say.
'A wrestling match.' He laughs. 'Yes, you could describe life that way.'
So which side wins, I ask?
'Which side wins?'
He smiles at me, the crinkled eyes, the crooked teeth.
'Love wins. Love always wins.'"
"Let's begin with this idea, Morrie said. 'Everyone knows they're going to die, but nobody believes it."
"In the South American rainforest, there is a tribe called the Desana, who see the world as a fixed quantity of energy that flows between all creatures. Every birth must therefore engender a death, and every death brings forth another birth. This way, the energy of the world remains complete."
"'Still,' he said, 'there are a few rules I know to be true about love and marriage: if you dont' respect the other person, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. If you don't know how to compromise, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. If you can't talk openly about what goes on between you, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. And if you don't have a common set of values, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. Your values must be alike.'
'And the biggest one of those values, Mitch?' Yes? 'Your belief in the *importance* of your marriage.'" "'People are only mean when they're threatened,' he said later that day, '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 part of this culture.'" "Every society has its own problems....The way to do it, I think, isn't to run away. You have to work at creating your own culture.' 'Look, no matter wher eyou live, the biggest defect we human being have is our shortsightedness. We don't see what we could be. .....'The problem, Mitch, is that we don't believe we are as much alike as we are. White and blacks, Catholics and Protestants, men and women. If we saw each other as more alike, we might be very eager to join in one big huge human family in this world, and to care about that family the way we care about our own. ...We all have the same beginning--birth--and we all have the same end--death. So how different can we be? Invest in the human family. Invest in people. Build a little community of those you love and who love you. ...In the beginning of life, when we are infants, we need others to survive right? And at the end of life, when you get like me, you need others to survive right? ...but here's the secret: in between, we need others as well."
