Assignments - watch Tuesdays with Morrie - read Mitch Album’s Tuesdays with Morr

Question

Assignments

- watch Tuesdays with Morrie

- read Mitch Album’s Tuesdays with Morrie

- journal #2 (see prompts below)

1. Summarize the first half of the book/movie. How do they differ?

2. Is the film “Tuesdays with Morrie” a religious/spiritual film? Explain.

3. What are you finding most interesting and/or disturbing in the film/book?

4. Morrie talks a great deal about spirituality and meaning in life. What is spirituality? What do you think are the big questions of life? What are your big questions in life? Where do you look for “answers” to these questions? What issues were most important for Morrie?

5. What is Morrie’s “worldview” (his understanding of life and reality)? Have you ever thought about the way(s) you view the world? Discuss your own worldview. What are the primary sources for the way you live, the choices you make, and how you think about life?

Explanation / Answer

Answer

1. Summary of the book

orrie is an extremely lovable college professor who—in his late sixties—finds out that he is dying. The story of his last few weeks on earth is told by Mitch, one of Morrie's former students, who happens to bump into him during his final days.

Those are the bare bones, but now let's elaborate a bit.

In the beginning of the story, we get a brief introduction to Mitch and Morrie during Mitch's college graduation ceremony. Mitch Albom is a young guy, just starting his adult life, and Morrie Schwartz, he tells us, is his favorite professor. The feeling seems to be mutual, as Morrie gives Mitch a hug and tearfully says goodbye.

Fast forward to years later: Morrie has contracted ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. It destroys his muscles, making him weaker and weaker until his lungs can no longer support him and he dies. He and his wife prepare for this new life. How? Morrie refuses to throw in the towel. Instead, he starts opening up his home to visitors, reaching out to everyone he knows.

Meanwhile, Mitch has been living kind of a mediocre life. To be clear, by mediocre we don't mean that he hasn't gone to grad school (he has), nor that he hasn't been working really hard and making tons of money (because he's done both of these things as well). Nope, we mean he isn't happy. Instead he's pretty much a workaholic who doesn't even have time for his wife. Luckily for Mitch, though, he happens to come across his old professor being interviewed by Nightline on ABC.

Mitch visits Morrie on the first of many Tuesdays. At first he's a bit taken aback by how frail Morrie is and worries that he's made the wrong decision by visiting, but that fear begins to melt pretty quickly. They end up chatting for hours, as if no time has passed between them, and Morrie is able to convince Mitch to come back and visit next week.

And so it begins.

This final class (so to speak) consists of discussions about important things: friendship, love, loss, death, and so on. As the weeks pass, Morrie's body grows weaker, though he fights every day to stay positive for the people he loves. As Mitch watches his friend suffer, his own heart gets stronger. He thinks deeply about the things around him, and starts reaching out to help take care of Morrie in an effort to show his concern.

Finally, on their fourteenth Tuesday, they have to say goodbye. Morrie can barely speak and raises his hand to give Mitch a hug. It's a heartbreaking farewell, and we highly suggest you have a tissue or two on hand when you reach this point.

Morrie passes away a few days later.

To finish up, Mitch gives us his conclusion. It's a kind of retrospective on his "last class" with Morrie. His heart brims with gratitude for what Morrie did for him, and looking back, he only has one regret: that he didn't reach out to Morrie earlier.

If he had, they might have had more Tuesdays together.

Points of difference between book and the movie

1. Movie never brought up Mitch brother lke they did in the book

2. In the movie they did not talk about Mitch as a child like they did in the book

3. In the movie. it is shown that Janine is giving the engagement ring back to Mitch at the airport. This was not mentioned in the book

4. Mitch and Janine relationship was way more a part of the movie than in the book

Answer 2.

We don't really get a clear definition of spirituality in Tuesdays with Morrie. Although Morrie is a spiritual person, he doesn't have a specific religion; instead he takes ideas from different beliefs and adopts them to his own way of thinking. His focus throughout the book seems to be on learning how to live, rather than worrying about whatever the next step is. And to this end, he entertains various spiritual ideas instead of picking, say, one unified religion to follow. Because of course Morrie finds his own way through—it's kind of his thing.

Answer 3. The most intresting things that i found in the book are:

1. Live every day as if it were your last : Morrie is happy that he has time to say goodbye to his loved ones thanks to his disease, which is slowly moving him closer to death. Morrie calls himself lucky; I am not sure if, under the circumstances he was in, I would call myself that.

2. Remember to spend quality time with the family: Most of us have a tendency of taking our family for granted. If it is a Friday night, we start planning our outing with the friends. Sometimes, we have to be forced to spend time with our parents on holidays. Life is fun with friends and parties with them; however, the bond of love, which we share with our parents, is the ultimate one. Instead of keeping them at the bottom of our priority list, we must cherish and appreciate them whenever we get a chance.

3. Enjoy your emotions to the fullest: One should not hide from any emotion, rather one must experience each emotion entirely. If you love someone, love them with all you have; if you are sad, cry until you cannot cry anymore; so that when the same emotion hits you again, you know exactly what is going to happen. We hide ourselves from emotions because we are afraid to get hurt.

4. Pay attention to the person you talk to: I wonder how many of us really listen while we talk! According to Morrie, it is really important to pay our utmost attention to the person you are conversing with. Imagine if this is the last conversation with your loved one, would you wish to let it go unheard?

Answer 4: Spirituality is the quality of being concerned with the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things.

The big questions for life according to me are:

Why is there something rather than nothing?
2. Is our universe real?
3. Do we have free will?
4. Does God exist?
5. Is there life after death?
6. Can you really experience anything objectively?
7. What is the best moral system?
8. What are numbers?
9. What is truth?
10. What is the meaning and purpose to life?
11.What is true happiness?

I look for these answers in my self and my experiences.

issues that were most important to Morrie were:

Acceptance through detachment

Reincarnation and renewal

Live every day as if it were your last

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