Tuesday's with Morrie

Tuesdays with Morrie, written by Mitch Albom, is a story of the love between a man and his college professor, Morrie Schwartz. This true story captures the compassion and wisdom of a man who only knew good in his heart. A man who lived his life to the fullest up until the very last breath of his happily fulfilled life. When Mitch learned of Morrie's illness, the began the last class of Morrie's life together and together tried to uncover "The Meaning of Life." These meetings included discussions on everything from the world when you enter it to the world when you say goodbye. Morrie Schwartz was a man of great wisdom who loved and enjoyed to see and experience simplicity in life, something beyond life's most challenging and unanswered mysteries. Morrie was a one of a kind teacher who taught Mitch about the most important thing anyone can ever learn: life. He taught Mitch about his culture, about trust, and perhaps most importantly, about how to live.

One lesson Morrie teaches Mitch is about the view his culture has and how we, not only Mitch but also the rest of the world, should not believe what they say. Morrie tells Mitch: "Take my condition. The things I am supposed to be embarrassed about now -- not being able to walk, not being able to wipe my ass, waking up some mornings wanting to cry -- there is nothing innately embarrassing about them. It's the same for women not being thin enough, or men not being rich enough. It's just what our culture would have you believe. Don't believe it."

Morrie speaks these words of advice to Mitch during their eleventh Tuesday together, when they talk specifically about culture. Gradually, Morrie has come to accept his physical handicaps, just as he has come to accept his impending death. He complains that the culture is wrong to deem natural physical need as socially embarrassing, and thus he refuses to believe that his handicaps are shameful. In rejecting the values of the popular culture, Morrie creates his own set of customs, which accommodate the physical shortcomings popular culture finds disgraceful and embarrassing. As Morrie sees it, popular culture is a dictator under which the human community must suffer. He has already suffered enough from his disease, and does not see why he should seek social acceptance if it is not conducive to his personal happiness. Throughout the book, popular culture is portrayed as a vast brainwashing machine, wiping clean the minds of the public, and replacing the inherent kindness they posses at birth with a ruthless greed and selfish focus.

Aside from teaching Mitch about culture, Morrie seeks to teach him about trust. He explains to Mitch: "You see, . . . you closed your eyes. That was the difference. Sometimes you cannot believe what you see; you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too -- even when you're in the dark. Even when you're falling."

Morrie says this to his class in a flash back during the second Tuesday. He has asked his class to perform a trust fall exercise, in which the students test one another's trust and reliability by doing trust falls; one student will fall straight backwards and must rely on another student to catch them. Not one student can trust another until one girl falls without flinching. Morrie notes that the girl had closed her eyes, and says that this exercise serves as a metaphor for the secret to trust in relationships; one must sometimes trust blindly, relying only on what they feel to guide them in their decision-making. He uses the exercise to teach his students that trustworthiness is a quality shared by two people in a partnership, and that each person takes a risk in trusting the other. This risk,