tuesdays with Morrie

Each spring, my city library system conducts a "one book" program. The idea is to get as many people in the city reading and talking about the same book. This year's pick is "tuesdays with Morrie" by Mitch Albom. This book came out 10 years ago and was a huge bestseller but I had never read it. I read it the past few days. It tells the true-life story of Mitch Albom's visits with Morrie Schwartz, a former college professor who is dying of ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Over the course of twelve Tuesdays as Morrie gets progressively weaker, he imparts his wisdom to Mitch. He basically gives a course in how to live and how to accept death.

One of the lessons that most struck me was on the seventh tuesday when they talk about the fear of aging. This is a topic which I have been thinking alot about lately. I like Schwarz's attitude:

It's very simple. As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two, you'd always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not always decay, you know. It's growth. . . All younger people should know something. If you're always battling against getting older, you're always going to be unhappy, because it will happen anyhow. . . You have to find out what's good and true and beautiful in your life as it is now.

Wise words from a dying man. This book is full of them. It is well-worth reading.