"Morrieisms"

So in my Psychology class on againg we have been watching a movie called "Tuesdays with Morrie". Its an excellent film! It stars Jack Lemmon and Hank Azaria, and is based upon a best selling book of the same title. It is the story of a retired college professor (Morrie Schwartz) that is dying of ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease), who has inspired a past student of his (Mitch Albom) to write and record his philosophies on life, loving and learning. It is an amazing story, and i would recommend the book or the movie to anyone. Mitch Albom is the author, and he recently came out with a book called "The Five People You Meet in Heaven".....im kinda interested in that one too.

Anyway, in the movie.....our main character has certain epiphonal (is that a word?) moments, and comes up with some brilliant statements...or "Morrieisms". I had to reflect about them in a paper this week, so i thought id share.....since i have no time to update! Hope you enjoy! God Bless

"Life is a tension of opposites – pulling you back and forth like a rubber band"
The idea that life is pulling you back and forth, stretching you from end to end, and snapping you back into place, really resonates with me. Some days we may feeling like we aren’t being stretched at all and life is going fine. We are happy in our inflexibility, in our state of motionless inertia, enjoying the comfortableness of knowing we don’t have to change. Yet life is not like that in Morrie’s mind, nor is it in reality. Reality stretches our rubber band so thin that we feel we are going to break sometimes. We certainly don’t enjoy being stretched that far, but it always leaves us more flexible, knowledgeable and experienced. Morrie lived his life knowing he would be pulled back and forth, yet relished it rather than regretting it. The realization that life will continue to do this until we die can only help us in preparing for and dealing with the ‘tugs’ we will face in the future.

"Love always wins"
This statement is so simple yet so profound. Our bodies are wired in such a way that it makes it almost too easy for us to respond to moments of conflict, anxiety and stress with fear. Yet fear can present itself in so many ways: anger, frustration, retaliation, revenge, etc. Morrie’s statement is advice to approach every situation that might causes us to question, with one act: love. Love is also expressed and presented in many different ways: openness, kindness, self-control, generosity, etc. One could almost argue that all conflicts, arguments and even wars come to resolution one the basis of love. Yet in our daily lives this can also be applicable. To every situation, one can respond in anyway we choose; will we decide to let our instincts and emotions drive our reactions, or will we choose to respond in love?

"If you’re in bed you’re dead"
I have a story that will help illustrate this point for me, and hopefully you! I came home from church on Sunday feeling just generally inadequate. The service had been great however: the worship was inspiring, the sermon was very applicable and the fellowship was excellent. Yet I came home feeling like I’d been thrown in a ditch; wish I could explain it. So, I decided my only remedy was to get some sleep and forget about everything for a couple of hours. I prayed before my nap that God would send me a dream to help inspire me for the rest of the day and get me back on track; that didn’t happen. Instead, my sleep got interrupted by a phone call (someone needing a key to the church), and later by an unexpected visitor that wanted someone to talk to. My plan for forgetting never worked, and God showed me how true this Morrieism really is. He knew a nap, or a dream wasn’t going to solve my issue of inadequacy, but life would. Sometimes a short nap can help you relax and catch up on some much needed rest, but that was not my problem on Sunday. I needed to feel the reins on the horse of liberation, and ride unrestrained in the field of life. OK……so, I went a little overboard on my story, but Morrie’s statement ties it all in perfectly. I wasn’t living by sleeping through my issue, I was stuck in Dr. Suess’s “waiting place”. Thankfully, God pulled me out!

"There is nothing innately shameful of being dependent"
This Morrieism has been reinforced for me by my meetings with Sr. Marie Carmel. She has an incredible outlook on the way that she ages, and has fully realized and accepted that there are now and will also be in the future, things that she will be incapable of doing by herself. She once said that “when you’ve lost enough, the doing is no longer important, it is the being that is”. She is the kind of person that looks at the idea of dependency as another opportunity to explore the freedom in her limitations. She is the one that tries to stretch the rubber band when life decides not to stretch it anymore. Although there are times where she feels the need to be independent in doing certain things, she doesn’t wallow in the times she is dependant, yet looks for an opportunity to develop something new in her life. For her dependency is not a matter of shame, it is a matter of growth. Morrie’s physical inabilities didn’t allow him to do the things he wanted to do, yet it never diminished his ability to love. He strived for that in his dependence, and was not reduced by pride even in his final days.

"Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live"
In Morrie’s case, he had learnt how to deal with death and the process of dying physically; therefore he could live courageously in the realization that one day he would be gone. Yet this statement can be applied in so many ways. We don’t need only to learn how to die physically in order to live, but also materially. I have a t-shirt I picked up from a concert once from a band named “Die to Self”. I feel that sometimes we really need to do that in order to live. Feelings of selfishness, inadequacy, self-pity and even self-glorification will give us as much short term relief as a cigarette. Paul, a one-time Christian persecutor turned deliverer of God’s word said this to the Christians in Rome: “Our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. For when we died in Christ we were set free from the power of sin. And since we died with Christ we will also share his new life.” (6:6-8). I believe we all have the opportunity to ‘die’ to the things in our life that bring us down and we don’t have to do it alone. Dying to ourselves and dedicating our lives to a man that dedicated His death to our burdens gives us life. Morrie’s statement speaks to this not only on a physical level but also on a spiritual level.