Acknowledging and Accepting Death with Morrie

Everyone is going to die eventually, but most people don’t want to acknowledge it until it’s either happening or about to. In the novel “Tuesdays with Morrie”, Morrie is an elderly man who is in his last days of life after being diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and their rekindled relationship after many years. Throughout the story he explains what people should cherish most in life before it's over. One of his main topics is being happy with yourself and succumbing to the fact that bad things will happen to everyone whether we like it or not. He spends every Tuesday with his former student Mitch who he explains different things he has learned that he feels the world should know before he passes.Morrie says that everyone knows they are going to die, but no one really believes it.

This speaks very true to many individuals. Most people can’t really imagine their death until it shows up in their face. Everyone knows that people die, but usually when you imagine someone old who has lived their life to the fullest. Then there's other times when someone around your age passes away and then the realization comes back that just because your young it doesn't make you invincible.One of the best examples that can be used to support Morries claim is drug addicts. These types of people will shove a needle full of chemicals in their arms. They know every time they decide to ingest these dangerous toxic drugs the chance of death is extremely prominent, but their excuse is that they’ll be fine until someone close to them passes. People can push out the idea that they’ll die but when the undeniable fact is in front of them usually that person will change their way of thinking and possibly their life. Dying has become something you just don't talk about over dinner. It's more of a private thing that we keep to ourselves.

Due to families not speaking about this very real thing, most of us grow up thinking were invincible. Society tells us to dictate how we comprehend death and so we spend so much of our life trying to make more money, buy nicer things and keep elevating. No one wants to die knowing they were alive but really never lived. Based on his decision not to wither up and die, and instead use his dying, as an opportunity to teach others what truly matters in life, shows how unselfish and positive he really was.This is one of the bigger lessons Morrie really tries to get Mitch to truly understand.

Some people might try and refute this by saying everyone knows about death. Well of course everyone knows about death but not everyone thinks about if they are truly making the best out of there life. Morrie feels that since he has been every age he doesnt want all of his knowledge about life to be wasted. This is why Mitch patiently listens to him and records everything they talk about so none of it goes to waste. This novel speaks so clear that it’s like it came out this year. Most people would agree with Morrie that we as a society don’t like to speak about death.