18 year old Tuesdays

Morrie Schwartz dancing

Your life is not about you.

                                                            Zen saying

I’m usually 10 to 20 years late. If a book is on The New York Times bestsellers list in 1998, I’ll probably read it in 2015. Well, sometimes I get to it a little earlier, but Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom is a very good example. Published in 1997 I only read it last week.

Retired sociology professor Morrie Schwartz, dying from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig's disease and his former student Mitch Albom had these conversations on Tuesdays in the months before his death. They covered a variety of subjects relating to the fundamentals of life. It was as if his imminent death made the wise Morrie see things even clearer than before.

From one such a conversation Albom shares the following:

“I heard a nice little story the other day”, Morrie says. He closes his eyes for a moment and I wait.

“Okay. The story is about a little wave, bobbing along in the ocean, having a grand old time. He's enjoying the wind and the fresh air-until he notices the other waves in front of him, crashing against the shore. "My God, this is terrible," the wave says. "Look what's going to happen to me!"

Then along comes another wave. It sees the first wave, looking grim, and it says to him, "Why do you look so sad?"

The first wave says, "You don't understand! We're all going to crash! All of us waves are going to be nothing! Isn't it terrible?"

The second wave says, "No, you don't understand. You're not a wave, you're part of the ocean.”

I smile. Morrie closes his eyes again.

“Part of the ocean,” he says, “part of the ocean.”

I watch him breathe, in and out, in and out.

George