Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson

Interviews & Essays

Mitch Albom: Just to say thanks for the continuous stunning reaction to this small little book.

Mitch Albom: It's funny you should ask that question. When I was in college, back in the '70s, I used to call Morrie "coach." It was a nickname that I had for him. When I called him up 16 years later, and his nurse put him on the phone -- this was the day after I'd seen the "Nightline" program -- I began by saying, "Morrie, my name is Mitch Albom. I was a student of yours in the '70s. I don't now if you remember me." And the first thing Morrie said after 16 years was, "How come you didn't call me coach?" So, it was obvious that our relationship had stayed close to his heart, despite my absence.

Mitch Albom: Both. Ever since Morrie's death, I've tried to reorganize my priorities, putting less emphasis on work and accomplishments and far more on family, friends, time to absorb nature, and being involved in my community. I've cut my workload down at the newspaper where I work from five columns a week to two. I've negotiated long stretches of time off with my radio commitments -- I now get between two and three months a year away from the job -- and dropped several television obligations. My wife and I are trying to start a family, something that had never been a priority with me prior to Morrie. Also, my attitude towards death, towards the sick, and towards taking care of the elderly has been profoundly affected by my time with Morrie. So to answer your question briefly, while I am far from a perfect student, even of my own book, I try every day to keep my priorities in a healthier focus than I did before I was reunited with my old professor.

Mitch Albom: That's a great and important question. There's no perfect answer, but what I imagine Morrie would suggest is, first of all, to be direct with your expression of your feelings. Tell your father, for example, that you love him and that the limited time that you may have together is important for you, and you want to get closer to him. Many times, breaking down the barriers, as you refer to them, simply requires communicating in a different way than you always have. People build up baggage over the years and don't say certain things to one another and do say certain things in an annoying or discouraging fashion to the other party -- so that sometimes they're not even listening to what you say, but how you say it. I think if you sit down next to your father, hold his hand -- if he'll let you -- and begin by saying, let's put everything up to this point behind us and focus on the time we have left. Maybe that will be a beginning. I hope so, for both of you.

Mitch Albom: Yes, you're very correct. Interestingly, I recently returned from Japan where they are releasing TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE in Japanese, and the people there saw my book as controversial, because in Japan they do not tell terminally ill patients that they are dying. It is somehow considered impolite. So they marveled at the very idea of sitting alongside a dying man who knew he was dying and was still willing to speak about it. What I learned from Morrie -- and what he wanted desperately to get across -- is that dying is in every way a part of living, and there is much to be learned from those of us who have truly recognized our fate and are in the final stages of our life. There is a clarity, a wisdom, an insight, and even a certain serenity that often comes with facing death, and these things are invaluable in living a good life as well. So I feel if we spent more time with the dying and the sick, we would lose some of the horror that we associate with it, and when our turns came to face that fate, we would be much better prepared both emotionally and spiritually.

Mitch Albom: Yes, we are in the process of doing exactly that. It's my hope that we -- when I say we, I mean myself and Morrie's family -- can use some of the money from the book, which was originally only written to pay Morrie's medical expenses, to establish a way for the things he taught to go on. We are discussing with different schools and scholarship organizations what the best way to do this [is]. When we have it firmly established, we will publicize it through all the same mechanisms that are used to publicize the book. Thank you for your interest in this.

Mitch Albom: That's an interesting question. I never knew one grandfather -- he died before I was born. His wife, my grandmother, lived with us from the time I was seven years old, so I was extremely close with her. My other set of grandparents were immigrants, and my grandfather did not speak very often or very much. He died rather suddenly without my ever having a chance to really relate to him as an adult. My remaining grandmother, sadly, died very slowly and lost her memory to Alzheimer's, which was a very painful thing to observe. I remember going to visit her in the hospital and having her not recognize me. She then tried to leave her bed and go to the bathroom but had an "accident" before she made it. This event -- seeing someone so old suffering such a childish indignity -- haunted me for many years. And it wasn't until Morrie opened my eyes to the fact that a decaying body does not necessarily mean the decaying spirit or a decaying mind, that I was able to change my thinking about death and aging.

Mitch Albom: That's a good question, too. I always tell people who ask about TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE that it is not a book after which you read it that you must quit your job, sell your house, burn your clothes, and move to Oregon and join an Ashram. Rather, the whole idea behind TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE is learning a balance in life, the ability to be productive and do important work while not losing sight of the big picture in life -- the big picture being love, family, community, nature. So, what I have tried to do is temper my ambition. When I want something in my career I ask myself, do I just want it because I want the success, or do I want to do it because it's important to me and is a worthwhile use of time? You'd be surprised at how much of our working life doesn't fit that second description. I have learned to accept the fact that there will always be people moving faster than me, achieving more than me, making more money than me, and that is perfectly fine. I have learned not to feel like a loser if I choose to slow down my life or say no to certain projects or jobs, even if they would mean advancement. Once you realize that trying to run faster than everyone else in the work world is not really a worthwhile use of your time, you find it very easy to enjoy the simpler things that are all around us. So, I haven't quit all my jobs, but I have cut them back. I haven't stopped wanting to advance, but I have given up the idea that my pace has to somehow exceed everyone else's. This is how you begin to unwind, to unhook, to detach from things that really give you no meaning in your life, and slowly your eyes are opened to the things that do.

Mitch Albom: Oh, yeah, it never ends. I have conversations with him pretty much every day. I only wish he were alive to see how many students he could reach over this "computer business." He would have gotten a big kick out of it.

Mitch Albom: Well, Oprah Winfrey bought the film rights to TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE early on. I was very hesitant, to be honest, at any idea of a film, as was Morrie's family. It was for that reason that we decided if anyone were to handle this, Oprah, who I have gotten to know a little bit, would be sensitive to the story and true to the book. Remember, these are real people we're talking about, not fictional characters. I happened to visit with Oprah last week, and the plan right now is to have this as a special "Oprah Winfrey Presents" TV-movie on ABC in May of 1999. However, Oprah also mentioned an enormous amount of feature film interest from big-name actors and big-name directors who have read the book and have been touched by it. So I don't really know what's ultimately going to happen. I'm just the writer -- they leave me out of the loop. But I hope whoever ultimately makes this, be it for TV or feature film, is moved by Morrie's spirit and is true to his ideas and words. That's all I want from the project. And hopefully, that's what will happen.

Mitch Albom: No, it has definitely inspired me to look up not only old teachers, but old friends and other influences in my life. I believe that if someone touched you with their wisdom and their spirit when you were younger, chances are, if you encounter them again, they will still be able to do so. More importantly, you may find that you are more willing to listen, because you slip back into your student mode, the way you used to feel before you knew it all. It was this magical chemistry that worked for Morrie and me and, I believe, exists in some form between all favorite teachers and students.

Mitch Albom: Thats a really interesting question. It's hard to answer, because I was only reunited with Morrie by accident because he was on the "Nightline" program talking to Ted Koppel about what it was like to die. Had he not been dying, he would have never been talking to Koppel. And given my self-absorbed frame of mind at the time, had he not been dying, I might not have felt as guilty or ashamed by my absence from his life and might not have been compelled to visit him as I did. I'm just being honest here. I do think that Morrie's conversations with me took on a certain focus, inspiration, and, even in a small way, a desperation, because of his dwindling time. I like to think that as a result of my time with him, I have become the kind of person that would no longer need a terminal illness to reunite me with someone who I cared about so much.

Mitch Albom: There was a newspaper article in The Boston Globe, which came about because one of Morrie's friends had written the reporter about Morrie. That article found its way to Koppel, Koppel found [his] way to Morrie, I found my way to "Nightline," and everything fell into place.

Mitch Albom: Well, as a columnist, or rather as a journalist, you are firstly trained not to talk about yourself. So that was the toughest part for me about writing TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE. Dealing with my own emotions and weaknesses is much more difficult than simply stating who I think is going to win the Super Bowl. Conversely, I know a lot of people think writing about sports is simply a lot of words about curveballs and touchdowns, but I believe sports is a human activity, same as politics, education, space travel, you name it. And the truth is, you can find the whole of the life experience -- glory, heartbreak, inspiration, greed, even death -- while writing about the sports world. So, in some ways, the experience was similar in that I was recording what another person was saying, and writing about another person's life, but in other ways, the subject matter and the complete lack of a playing field or crowds or fame was completely new and different.

Mitch Albom: Whew. First of all, I think a good mentor listens to his student. Doesn't prejudge him. Doesn't become aloof or feel superior. I think a good mentor is able ot inspire his student to want to learn from his experience, maybe even become like the mentor, but not because the mentor insists on imitation. Rather, the mentor's actions and teachings should somehow find their way to the student's heart on their own so that the student should always hunger to hear and learn more from his or her mentor.

Mitch Albom: Yes, there are countless times that I wish Morrie were here with me to answer my questions. I have gone to his grave several times, as he asked me to in the book, and, although I had a million things I wanted to ask him, what I found myself asking him over and over was, "Am I doing okay by you down here?" I mostly hope that I am representing what Morrie believed and what our conversations were truly about, and I guess every now and then, I would love to hear Morrie say in that raspy voice of his, "You're doing okay, kid." I guess, like all of us who have lost someone, I will just have to trust the voice that I hear in my heart, which is often his anyhow.

Mitch Albom: No, I must admit, I never thought there would be anything like this response. As you may know, TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE was written simply as a way for me to pay Morrie's medical expenses, which were enormous due to his desire to die at home, a process which therefore was not covered in any way by insurance and which took more than two years, thanks to the cruelty of ALS [Lou Gehrig's disease]. The original printing of TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE was 25,000 copies, and I would have been delighted if we sold those and called it a day. So the fact that there is now something like 1.1 million copies out there, and that nice people like yourselves are bothering to sit in front of a computer to hear anything I have to say is a constant surprise to me. But a good one because it shows that when you do something from the heart, people pick up on it and react with their hearts. And one of the great lessons of this whole TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE experience has been my renewed faith in the goodness of people and the universality of our experiences, especially grief, loss, and the desire for love to go on even after death. So, I thank everyone who has opened their heart to this book, and I remain surprised, but pleasantly so, at how a simple story about an old man and a young man can reach so many people around the world.

Mitch Albom: Maybe just this: If you have someone in your life that you are separated from and that you care about -- be it because of distance, or anger, or a crumbling relationship, or even simply because you are too "busy" to get in touch with them -- be smarter than I was. Find your way back to them. Open your heart to them. And soak them in for all the good and love that they have to offer you and you have to offer them. I assure you, you will be glad that you did. Thank you for your continued interest in this book. Goodnight.