1. “Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.”
- “The things you spend so much time on — all this work you do — might not seem as important. You might have to make room for some more spiritual things.”
- “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 (materialistic things).”
- Once you know you’re dying, you focus on what really matters (family, friends, community, etc.). Why can’t that be all the time?
2. On the meaning on life
- “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.”
- “You notice,” he added, grinning, “there’s nothing in there about a salary.”
3. “Giving makes me feel like I’m living.”
- “The opposite, we know, is false. Taking never makes you feel alive. It may be the basis of marketing, commercialism, Madison Avenue — but we know what Morrie said about “not buying the culture.” Taking a new car, a new suit, a new flat – screen TV — none of it will make you feel alive. It’s a temporary thrill, gone quickly when the new smell (or the warranty) wears off.”
- “That you spent your days giving. Of your time. Of your heart. Of yourself. That’s how you live on, for a day, or, through others, generations.”
4. On being present (one of the key ways to give to others)
- “I believe in being fully present,” Morrie said. “That means you should be with the person you’re with. When I’m talking to you now, Mitch, I try to keep focused only on what is going on between us. I am not thinking about something we said last week. I am not thinking of what’s coming up this Friday. I am not thinking about doing another Koppel show, or about what medications I’m taking.
- Along similar lines (about the past and future)
- “Accept the past as past, without denying it or discarding it”.
- “Don’t assume that it’s too late to get involved.”
5. On detachment
- “But detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That’s how you are able to leave it.”
- “Take any emotion — love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I’m going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions — if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them — you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid. You’re afraid of the pain, you’re afraid of the grief. You’re afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails.“
- “But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, ‘All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment.”
6. On aging
- “It’s very simple. As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty – two, you’d always be as ignorant as you were at twenty – two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It’s growth. It’s more than the negative that you’re going to die, it’s also the positive that you understand you’re going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.”
- “Mitch, it is impossible for the old not to envy the young. But the issue is to accept who you are and revel in that. This is your time to be in your thirties. I had my time to be in my thirties, and now is my time to be seventy – eight.
- “Accept what you are able to do and what you are not able to do”.
7. On marriage
- “There are a few rules I know to be true about love and marriage: If you don’t respect the other person, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. If you don’t know how to compromise, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. If you can’t talk openly about what goes on between you, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. And if you don’t have a common set of values in life, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. Your values must be alike. “And the biggest one of those values, Mitch?” Yes? “Your belief in the importance of your marriage.”