Tuesdays with Morrie
think i really love this book! its the only bookt hat i'll re-read jus barely a few days after the last pages were flipped... there's some mysterious form of attraction that's drawing me to this book.
i guess one of its attraction appears to be the continuous flood of emotion and feelings from the story's main character, a old university professor suffering form a terminal illness on the brink of death. it was really moving and inspiring, giving us a brief time (whilst reading) to think abt issues that we would never give a second (or maybe 3rd) look at int he middle of a busy day.
it also talked abt how best we can deal wif pain and negative feelings,
"Don't cling to things, because everything is impermanent...detachment doesn't mean you don't let he experience penetrate you. On the contraty, you let it penetrate you fully. That's how you are able to leave it ...wash yourself witht he emotion. It won't hurt you. It will only help. If you pull it on like a familiar shirt, then you can say to youself "alright, that is (so-and-so-emotion) i dun hv to let it control me, i've seen it for what it is."
it gave me quite a radicaly new way to look at aging and how we shouldn't fear it,
"as you grow, you learn more. I fyou staed at 22, you'd always be as ignorant as you were at 22. Aging is not jus decay... its growth, its more than the negative that you're gonna die, it;s also the positive that you understand you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it...You know how ppl will also say, 'Oh if i was only young again'
you know what that reflects? Unsatisfied lives. Unfulfulled lives. lives that haven't found meaning. Because if you've found meaning in life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward, you want to see more, do more, you CAN'T wait until 65! ...if you're always battling against getting older, you're always going to be unhappy, because it will happen anyhow.
...You hv to find what's good and true and beautiful in your life as it is now. Looking back makes you competitive. And, age is not a competitive issue.
but it did subtly add in a point which i feel is equally important, no quotes but some of my own personal opinions:
That at the end of the day, in order to live such fulfilling lives, to give ourselves the ability to concentrate on loving others, on enjoying every moment of life, we still need to hv a balanced focus on all issues, money included. By balanced, i do not think its abt earning the 5 figure paycheck, neither is it abt getting that new BMW 7-series, nor is it abt gettinga bigger house than wad we're living in. on the contrary, its to balance our sense of ambitions, our drive for success, with a equally important and proportional part of our lives on living the lives that we are working for, to enjoy the human relations and the love that we can shower. to experience all these in its truest and purest forms, in the form of our family, our friends, our loved ones.
To seek a spiritually fulfilling life WITHOUT the "evils of money" would be next to impossible, we need the purchasing power to live fairly comfortable lives. we need to be able to guarantee our parents a comfortable retiring lives, our children a fair chance in education, our families a roof over the head and 3 meals to keep us full. but to become a slave to the dealings of the $ sign would negate our efforts at love and care for our family to become a big fat ugly ZERO.
To seek that balance is never easy, humans being humans, we always WANT more, we WANT better, and we WANT it NOW. i guess, at the end of the day, i feel it would take alot of constant reflection on our parts, at the start of the day, we listen to the little bird on our shoulder speaking, "is today the day i leave? hv i done everything i can or i want for my loved ones? will i live today in regret" and then decide how we want to live out the rest of the day.
getting quite philisophical, these were the things running through my mind when i re-read some of the pages. hmmm k shall update my blog later abt today's reapings. hope i get alot of surveys completed! =)
ghimz out.
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