Why do we fear death? (Book review on Tuesdays with Morrie)

 Tuesdays with Morrie is a story about an ill professor chatting with his former student about life, death and other topics that comprises the latter. Morrie Schwartz is a professor in Brandeis University in the city of Waltham, Massachusetts and the student, Mitch is the one that tells the story. The professor throughout the story maintains to be optimistic and rarely look pessimistic in every thing that is happening to his life and his surroundings. Even though he came from a poor family he still manages to achieve success in his life. A person that is willing to reach his dreams without surrendering his principle like reaching his dreams without exploiting the rights of other people and the likes. Morrie is Agnostic but he is still open to accept some beliefs that he thinks useful and might bring good to his life and the life of others. Even illness cannot hinder him to go on and enjoy what life can offer and spending it in the most wonderful way possible. Mitch, appreciates his ideas, concepts and the whole personality of the professor. the two often see each other every Tuesday of the week and learn some stuff from each other. The continue meeting beach other not until Mitch graduated from college. Sixteen years after, Mitch saw Morrie at the television. At first he hesitates to see his professor again but then he did. From that time, they constantly meet each other, sharing things that had happen in their own lives and how their lives where changed by certain situations.

Nowadays, most people become health conscious and live a "healthy lifestyle" because they are afraid to die. But Morrie accepted his fate in an optimistic way. He never thinks that dying would equal to being useless to this world. Instead of involving less in the society, he even interact with people as normal as possible. He get more involved of what is happening to his world and feels real sympathy to the people that are less fortunate. All of us will die, but thinking it in a negative way will lead us to become more afraid of death. It is a normal occurrence, that’s why there is no reason to be afraid. Just like Morrie did, he spent his remaining time in some valuable things and keeps on inspiring others despite of his situation.

Tuesday is indeed a normal day in us, but Mitch and Morie, Tuesdays are no ordinary days. these are the days wherein Morrie and Mitch spent time talking about the world, vulnerabilities, regrets, death, family, emotions, fear of aging, money, marriage, culture, forgiveness, perfect day, and love. But what I like most among his idea is his concept about dying. Indeed everyone knows that we all die eventually, but nobody are strong enough to face this reality. According to him if we only believe in that comcept we will act differently from what we are acting right now. Being prepared to die means that we are able to be more involved in our life and that once we learned how to accept that comcept, that is the time when we fully realized the real meaning of life - the real essence of our existence. Why do other people are afraid to die? It is because of the religious belief that rules their lives? For some, they are afraid because of uncertainty. For instance, I was afraid to die because I don’t know what will happen to me in afterlife. I don’t know whether my destination is in heaven, hell or in between. There’s a lot perception of afterlife, it will only depends on how a person act according to what he believes.

The author has succeeded to elaborate the word emotion through the idea of Professor Morrie. Emotions according to the book are not just a mere expression of love, sadness, grief, and fear. It has its own depth and meaning. Morrie in this part wanted Mitch to know that he must not be fully controled by his emotions and that he must be detached to his experiences. What does experiences brought to us? Indeed the different kinds of emotions. We do like the emotions that bring us good feelings but we hate the opposite. Those emotions cannot fully conquer us and if we can detach our self from it, we can alter it. For instance, if we can set aside our fright to be lonely, we will learn that there is still other emotion that we can use. Morrie compared it to a clothing that if we don’t like it we can change it right away.

Moreover, the topic about fear of aging triggers my interest because I am one of them. I don’t want to grow old and I don’t want to think that I am growing old. But like all other young people that Morrie was talking about, I didn’t also know anything about life. Morrie embrace aging and he enjoy his life. Being young, I must do the same. Not because I am oblige but because I want to learn more, I want explore something, and most of all,  I want to experience the real life. Because if I stay at my age right now, I will be ignorant and innocent of the things in the world and living the life will never be fully defined. Aging like death is a natural occurrence, and nothing about it is to be afraid of. It is our mindset that tells us to only think that way, but mindset can be reset. We can change our mindset and we must first believe that we can. Accepting the truth that we are aging is accepting the truth that we are growing, we are developing and weare developing to be a better one.

“The culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn’t work, don’t buy it” (quote from the book Tuesdays with Morrie).
Indeed, we are enslaves of our own culture, though it contagiously changing and still we are going with the flow. We always tend with the go with the status quo. We always wanted to be “in” in everything; in latest music, fashion trends and even values that we practice. We do the things that culture told us to do so and we refrain from doing things that culture is against. I am not against to our culture but I am very open to what Morrie wants to imply about that world. Change the culture that only stray us away from being the person that we wanted to be. We made that world, that is why we must have the power to control it, but nowadays the opposite happens. Though bigger portion of the reasons of why culture is changing was from us but still we are imprisoned to it and we continue to live with it.

The book Tuesdays with Morrie was packed with helpful ideas and philosophies that are worth to live on. The story was good and dramatic but the meaning of everything on it was colorful. Indeed the author succeed to give enlightenment to its reader. It also defined clearly what is life all about and how we should interact with it or should I say how we should live our lives to fullest. Like Morrie, even he is in between of life and death but he still continue to be an inspiration to many. Indeed, dying will never be synonymous to useless cause. The book is not the story of dying nor does it talk ofmere on death, but it expound and elaborate the real meaning, the real essence and the real stuffs about life and existence.