HW 23 - Illness & Dying Book, Part 2

Tuesdays with Morrie, by Mitch Albom, Random House Publications, 1997
 
Precis-
Visiting Morrie is becoming almost a ritual, he has a way to make you feel like you are the most important person i the room when he talks. Every tuesday we talk about a different topic ranging from family to love. Morrie said something the other tuesday about detachment, he said that to truely detach yourself from something you have to let it fully pennetrate you, take fear or pain from a deadly illness for example something morrie is going through. If you hold back on the emotions you will never detach from them but by throwing your self into these emotions you experience them fully and completely so now you know what pain and fear are and can say 'ok i have experienced that emotion. i recognize that emotion.Now i need to detach from that emotion for a moment.' he got this idea from the Bhuddist which is something he is identifying more and more with as he becomes more ill.

Quotes-

1. "Detachment doesn't mean you don't let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully." (103)

• I felt that this specific sentence really displayed Morries hypocriticalness. He would constantly talk about allowing yourself to experience everything without preventing any sort of physical emotional reaction however the fact that he is detaching himself means that he is trying to rush or get out of emotions he doesn't want to experience. (however i am not saying that detachment is the wrong way to go about things)

     2.  " There is a better approach. To know you're going to die, and to be prepared for it at any time."(81)

• This section of the book was the one i felt would connect to our 4 unit which is death, Morrie talks about how to approach death and says that preparation is key which i agree with completely but came to the realization that this is not always possible. Some things take time to do like being able to run a marathon for example. It takes months even years of preparation to do this, so if you die before finishing your preparation for the marathon are you prepared for death. Also the idea that constantly being concerned with death is very sadistic and would be something that i personally could not do. I would rather live life in the moment than worry about how to prepare for my future death.

    3. "Once you learn how to die you learn how to live" (82)

• This section is very similar to the one above however i agree with this point. I feel that what Morrie is trying to say here is not that learning how to die is learning how to live but that accepting the idea of death and its randomness leads to less of sense of fear of it. Not fearing death means that you could go out and experience an adventure like snowboarding, bungee jumping, or skydiving without having that hesitation that could essentially stop you from experiencing things that could make you a better and more alive person.

Connections-

Dealing with death is something that almost everyone will have to experience and something i have experienced already. However i have not yet found the right way (for me) to deal with it. I feel that death is something that should not be as complicated as it is. I'm not saying that death is not important but i feel that it should be as easy to mourn a life being lost as it is to rejoice at a life being given. To me death is just another experience and fear should not let you stop yourself from experiencing it. The idea that the better man is the one who has no emotions, therefore experiences no pain or fear is wrong it is the one who experiences it to the fullest and can release there emotions that is superior.