WELCOME TO
LUNA PAN'S NEVERLAND
I’ve known this book Tuesdays with Morrie for quite a long time. But it never occurs to me to read it. My friend Sherry read it first and mentioned it once when we met.
According to Sherry, the book is full of common sense. Easy to read, but might not be that impressive.
“Tell me more. For example?” I asked her.
Then Sherry pointed to one sentence on the book:
“Love wins. Love always wins.”
Well, it’s a standard cliche. But I don’t know why. At that moment, I decided to read the book. So that’s how I began.
There’s also one more thing to share. I didn’t realize it was a true story until I almost finished the whole book. Thus, the old professor Morrie and “I” Mitch are real existence. And I eventually got to understand why it showed a picture of an old man dancing at the beginning of the book.
And all of a sudden, I felt so emotional. All this “common sense” comes from a real man when he was suffering from ALS like Stephen Hawking, and when he was actually dying. He was sharing his lifelong wisdom with Mitch and now with all of us. It did make me see the whole book from a different perspective.
I won’t say I become so much wiser after reading Tuesdays with Morrie, because the book is quite different from another book I just finished reading, 12 RULES FOR LIFE.
12 Rules for Life | An Antidote to Chaos
But it’s real, and it matters in this way. That’s why I’m writing this post to share the book. I hope you can feel something too.
Tuesdays with Morrie
1.“Shouldn’t the world stop? Don’t they know what has happened to me?” But the world did not stop, it took no notice at all...
2.“I hope that one day you will think of me as your friend.”
3.I had no excuse for this, except the one that everyone these days seems to have. I had become too wrapped up in the siren of my own life. I was busy.
4.“Have you found someone to share your heart with?” he asked.
“Are you giving to your community?”
“Are you trying to be as human as you can be?”
5.“Dying,” Morrie suddenly said, “is the only one thing to be sad over, Mitch. Living unhappily is something else. So many of the people who come to visit me are unhappy.”
6.“Which side wins?” “Love wins. Love always wins.”
7.“So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important. This is because they’re chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.”
8.“The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.”
9.“Love is the only rational act.”
10.“Sometimes you can’t believe what you see, you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too—even when you’re in the dark. Even when you’re falling.”
11.“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”
12.“To know you’re going to die, and to be prepared for it at any time. That’s better. That way you can actually be more involved in your life while you’re living.”
13.“Don’t stop your lives,” he told them. “Otherwise, this disease will have ruined three of us instead of one.”
14.“Aging is not just decay, you know. It’s growth.”
15.“Offering others what you have to give. I don’t mean money, Mitch. I mean your time. Your concern. Your storytelling. It’s not so hard.”
16.“Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.”
17.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.
18.“Every society has its own problems... The way to do it, I think, isn’t to run away. You have to work at creating your own culture.”
19.“Invest in the human family. Invest in people. Build a little community of those you love and who love you.”
20.Morrie is sitting nearby. He is puzzled by the cheer. At one point, in the midst of “We’re number one!” he rises and yells, “What’s wrong with being number two?”
21.“Tears are okay.”
22.“It’s not just other people we need to forgive. We also need to forgive ourselves.”
23.“Just come and talk. Make it a Tuesday. You always come on Tuesdays.” We’re Tuesday people.
24.“Death ends a life, not a relationship.”
In the end, I feel I have a lot to say. Meanwhile, I’m speechless too. But there’s some feeling that hung up in my mind all the time when I was reading the book.
I just feel grateful.
