I recently finished Tuesdays with Morrie. It was a wonderful book about a dying elderly professor dictating his last witty aphorisms to his former student, a well respected sports journalist. Morrie Schwartz was affable and generous with his knowledge and affection. Mitch Albom was there to chronicle the last but ever so poignant punctuation to his old college professor’s rich and wonderful life; as Morrie catechizes from his death bed. The chapters tick off the refrain we've all come to recognize as we enter the second decade of a culture suckled of Oprah’s Angel Network and the growing use of sustainable products on HGTV. And that is: to pursue what’s really important: family, friends, love, humanity. Now before you start throwing rotten tomatoes at me for taking a dying man to task over his ideas, I freely admit I agree with the vast majority of what Morrie says. That we don’t miss the water ‘till the well runs dry. So of course when I finished the book I called all my loved ones and even looked up a few old acquaintances. Books, like Tuesdays with Morrie or When All You've Ever Wanted Isn't Enough: The Search for a Life That Matters by Harold Kushner, are designed to elicit such feelings of nostalgia and reverie. To make you slow your pace. Savor the great gift that life is. To laugh a little louder; to kiss a little deeper; to dance a little more freely and to work a little bit less. Like Alice Walker aptly and so beautifully wrote in her Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Color Purple:
“Listen, God love everything you love—and a mess of stuff you don’t. But more than anything else, God love admiration….Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.”
A lesson we can all live by. But here’s where things get sticky. Its easy to philosophize about life from the safe distance of prosperity. Now I’m not killing the messenger I’m just couching his message in the ostensible truth. These words were spoken by a highly educated college professor. Yes he was the scion of Russian-Jewish immigrants and yes he grew up poor in the Bronx, but after 30 years teaching in a prestigious college—Brandeis University is not McBurger University trust me—he was not hurting for cash. The author donated his sizable advance for the book to pay off most of Morrie’s outstanding medical bills. So the end of the professor’s life may have been tragic; filled with the pain and the shit and the phlegm that the great shrieking horror ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) brings, but it was tidy.Now again don’t deride me. Alls I’m sayin’ is its easy to philosophize about life from the safe distance of prosperity. I used to work as a trainer in an agency that placed former victims of domestic violence back into the workforce, giving them software training as well as life skills. One of my trainees told me a very touching story one morning, that before coming in to work her 5 year-old accidentally knocked over his bowl of cereal and she scolded him fiercely. Then she caught herself and realized she wasn’t angry because he was clumsy but that she had decided to splurge and buy an expensive brand of cereal with her last $5.00. Now when safety and finances are that immediate proselytizing seems so disingenuous. Morrie stated that human culture was bankrupt and skewed itself to be the antithesis of what it should be. That we behave as if we don’t belong to the animal kingdom, as if we’re aliens visiting this planet. I hear this speech all the time. On the subway, pockets of conversation in Starbucks; we have all become casual anthropologist ready to expound on the degradation of the human race. On how humans subvert this planet. The movie The Day the Earth Stood Still (not the dreadfully wooden and unimaginative Keanu Reeves version but the classic Cold War Era spine-tingly masterpiece with Michael Renny and Patricia Neal) both had aliens arriving to eradicate earth of its biggest threat. Proliferation. In 1951 it was nuclear, in 2008 it was pollution; specifically human. Now this theory is not new. Once when I was a child I saw our man's pollution rise up and attack Tokyo in the form of Hedora, one of Godzilla's best rivals, the Smog Monster. It was spawned from toxic waste and flew across Japan trailing a thick fog of instant death. In the end after a climatic battle on Mt Fuji, Godzilla returns to the ocean with a parting glare at the scientists who discovered the acid secreting monster. I must admit this youtube clip is startling and even more so disturbing what with the latest catastrophe in Japan.
But why must our actions produce an acid secreting monster? If we have indeed evolved, following Darwin's principle of natural selection we are what we are because those are traits most favored for survival. Vis-a-vis man can not be an anathema to the earth AND have evovled to be such. We, as humans, consume. Now granted that consumption like cancer can be twisted out of control. As much as I love the luxuriant despotism of Imelda Marcos, she didn't need--(no matter how titillating a pair of Christian Louboutin 5-inch black patent leather Mary Janes maybe)--3,000 pairs of shoes.
Baring excess is it wrong to want more out of life? Is it wrong to want a Mercedes? Is it wrong to want to have an extra room for guests? Is it wrong to have a little grandeur in one's life? I don't think answering yes will break some unwritten code of human ethics. Fine living is not the problem and I'm tired of the intellectual, spiritual or just plain bourgeois being delusory with us peasant classes about the meanings of life having no measure of gliteratti in it. I like a little bit of show-off-it-ness in my life thank you. And that doesn't subtract from my deeper spiritual path.Sometimes others have a direct interest in our not prospering. Wasn’t Eve seeking truth when she bit of the forbidden fruit? So does that mean curiosity is the original sin? Morrie teaches us with poise and grace to accept what we can't change. Now don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with acceptance. I actually think that acceptance of the inevitable and immutable can be liberating. When we realize—and mostly that realization comes at the end rather than nearer the beginning of our lives—that we have a finite amount of time on this planet and the fallacy of the American Dream of upward mobility (which I discussed here) is concretized, you are freed to pursue what it is you are free to pursue. Unless you are a single mother escaping an abusive relationship and on welfare in a job training program spending your last $5.00 on a box of Fruity Pebbles. So the take away from Tuesdays with Morrie and other books of its ilk is this… work very hard when you’re young. Make a shit load of money then retire early and sit back, enjoy and spread the gospel of a new world order because its always easy to philosophize about life from the safe distance of prosperity. Amen.
