81. Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom

I have been reading some books by some fabulous authors recently! This is the third book by Mitch Albom that I've read (others: For One More Day and The Five People You Meet in Heaven, pre-blog), and I've been super-impressed by all of them.
Anyway, this is a non-fiction book about Morrie Schwartz, a sociology professor at Brandeis University, who is dying from Lou Gehrig's disease. The author, Mitch Albom, had taken Morrie's classes back in college and was actually very close to him - but he had not corresponded with Morrie for several years (although he had promised to). After Albom sees a story about Morrie on Nightline, he tracks Morrie down and begins to visit him regularly. Morrie is at peace with the idea that he is going to die very soon - he has even come to peace with the fact that someone has to "wipe his ass" since he is no longer able to do it himself.

I was astonished by his complete lack of self-pity. Morrie, who could
no longer dance, swim, bathe, or walk; Morrie, who could no longer answer his own door, dry himself after a shower, or even roll over in bed. How could
he be so accepting? I watched him struggle with his fork, picking at a
piece of tomato, missing it the first two times - a pathetic scene, and yet I
could not deny that sitting in his presence was almost magically serene, the
same calm breeze that soothed me back in college.

During their visits, Morrie imparts a lot of life lessons to Albom. I especially liked the lessons in the chapter entitled "We Talk about Marriage":

"Well, I feel sorry for your generation," Morrie said. "In this culture, it's so important to find a loving relationship with someone because so much of the culture does not give you that. But the poor kids today, either they're too selfish to take part in a real loving relationship, or they rush into marriage and then six months later, they get divorced. They don't know what they want in a partner. They don't know who they are themselves - so how can they know who they're marrying? ...

There are a few rules I know to be true about love and marriage: If you don't 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 in life, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. Your values must be alike.

And the biggest one of those values, Mitch? ... Your belief in the importance of your marriage."

Woven in with these lessons are hints at what is going on in Albom's life (he seems to care a lot more about work than his family) and in larger society (the O.J. Simpson trial) ... events which are in stark contrast to what Morrie is trying to teach.

What I like the most about Albom is that all of the books I've read by him are of the self-help/self-improvement variety - but they're all so different. I feel like books by other self-help authors like Wayne Dyer and Deepak Chopra are all the same after a while. Instead of just telling you a worthwhile life lesson, Albom weaves lessons into beautifully written stories, and it's more up to you to pull from them what you need to. I think For One More Day is still my favorite Albom book, but I most definitely recommend this one, too.