Love Each Other or Perish

Dear Morrie,

To whichever corner of heaven you are comfortably practising your wisdom in, I want to tell you that I am glad to have met you.

I know you must be sad by the way many of us are going about our lives, but I am also sure that you are okay to see us live on making mistakes and sometimes, just sometimes being strong enough to admit those to ourselves. It is essential for moving on, for evolution, for becoming better than the levels of collective misery and mediocrity that human kind debilitates to.

I don't write reviews like this, but since your student says that you promised to be a brilliant listener post your ascent to a world I don't comprehend, I thought I should thank you directly for being who you are. Even if my words of gratitude are a shout into the void, I don't care. The afterglow your book lends me despite being profoundly poignant is unmistakable.

Actually, I am wrong. Not profoundly poignant, but PROFOUND. And SIMPLE. These are the two words I can use to describe your life, your existence and your acquired wisdom. I am talking to you in first person because I have a confession to make. All that you put out in words in your Tuesday lectures, I know those things. I am not dying as of now, but I just know them. Like, I believe all humans do, but they fail to admit it to themselves as many times as they should.

I have been 'preaching' similar things out loud to a few close ones, and beliefs in the same made me take some harsh decisions, and I wanted to be sure if I was not turning out to be a really big person inside my head. After reading your transcribed words, I think I am fine, really. I think I understand where you came from, your humanism and your world view.

My only not so proud moment while going through a journey of your last days is that I would not have been able to care for you the way your student did. I would have lurked around, but not touched you. I am just trying to make my peace with this realization while being on your journey.

Mitch Albom with Morrie in 1995

So, I hope you are always alive and that you keep giving strength to many of us who are grappling with miseries and notions of life without having understood the simplicity of love and longing in its essence. I hope the world understands soon that the only way to detachment goes through experience. Intense experience.

Like you say, "Love each other, or perish". I'll hope not to perish. I'll hope to love.

Warm wishes,

Saumya

P.S. - Thanks Neha Thureja for gifting me this book. You are a fonder part of my life after this book.