Tuesdays with Morrie (3)

The ninth Tuesday we talk about how love goes on.

The tenth Tuesday we talk about marriage:

Marriage. Almost everyone I knew had a problem with it. Some had problems getting into it, some had problems getting out. My generation seemed to struggle with the commitment, as if it were an alligator from some murky swamp. I wondered if people my age were being more careful than those who came before us, or simply more selfish.

I feel sorry for your generation. 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 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?

It's sad, because a loved one is so important. You realize that, especially when you're in a time like I am, when you're not doing so well. Friends are great, but friends are not going to be here on a night when you're coughing and can't sleep and someone has to sit up all night with you, comfort you, try to be helpful.

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 is your belief in the importance of your marriage.

Love each other or perish.

The eleventh Tuesday we talk about our culture:

Morrie believed in the inherent good of people. But he also saw what they could become.

People are only mean when they're threatened 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. Which is why I don't buy into it.

Every society has its own problems. The way to do it isn't to run away. you have to work at creating your own culture. No matter where you live, the biggest defect we human beings have is our shortsightedness. We don't see what we could be. We should be looking at our potential, stretching ourselves into everything we can become. But if you're surrounded by people who say 'I want mine now,' you end up with a few people with everything and a military to keep the poor ones from rising up and stealing it.

The problem is that we don't believe we are as much alike as we are. Whites and blacks, Catholics and Protestants, mean and women. If we saw each other as more alike, we might be very eager to join in one big human family in this world, and to care about that family the way we care about our own. But when you are dying, you see it is true. We all have the same beginning - birth - and we all have the same end - death. So how different can we be?

In the beginning of life, when we are infants, we need others to survive. And at the end of life, you need others to survive. But here's the secret: in between, we need others as well.

The twelfth Tuesday we talk about forgiveness:

It's not just other people we need to forgive. We also need to forgive ourselves. For all the things we didn't do. All the things we should have done. You can't get stuck on the regrets of what should have happened. That doesn't help you when you get to where I am. Make peace. you need to make peace with yourself and everyone around you.

The thirteenth Tuesday we talk about the perfect day:

A certain peace with the idea of dying. If we know, in the end, that we can ultimately have that peace with dying, then we can finally do the really hard thing - make peace with living. It's natural to die. The fact that we make such a big hullabaloo over it is all because we don't see ourselves as part of nature. We think because we're human we're something above nature. We're not. Everything that gets born, dies.

As long as we can love each other, and remember the feeling of love we had, we can die without ever really going away. All the love you created is still there. All the memories are still there. You live on - in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here.

Death ends a life, not a relationship.

There is no formula to relationships. They have to be negotiated in loving ways, with room for both parties, what they want and what they need, what they can do and what their life is like.

Love is when you are as concerned about someone else's situation as you are about your own.

The fourteenth Tuesday we say good-bye.