When most people face adversity, they give up. They see it as a challenge that can’t be overcome and rather than finding a way around it they flee in fear of the consequences. Usually, this is because we lack experience and knowledge of how to overcome the issue. But as we age and as our condition in life worsens through adversity, we gain the necessary knowledge to not overcome it, but to find comfort and acceptance in it. Through the telling of Morrie Schwartz’s life and teachings, his acceptance of adversity leads to his own personal enlightenment on living life they way it ought to lived in Tuesdays with Morrie. Morrie faces one of the hardest things that come with old age, the weakening of the body. However unlike what’s typical, his …show more content…
Most people wouldn’t want to live through his disease; they would spend all their time wallowing away in grief and in pain. And while both of those are acceptable responses to discovering a terminal illness, Morrie takes a different approach. What differentiates Morrie from everyone else in the world is his ability to take something as terrible as Lou Gehrig’s disease and use it to his own advantage. While his condition worsens, he takes the time to reflect back on his life. He confesses regrets, recalls the best and worst times of his life and focuses on the positive aspects of life rather than the negative. While it may be hard to initially provoke the thoughts regarding happiness and enlightenment, those thoughts tend to stay imprinted to the brain because ‘when you realize you are going to die, you see everything differently” (Albom 83). Morrie views life as opportunity during his dying days. Rather than obsessing over everything he didn’t do, he shares what he did and how life should be lived. He believed in the saying “tension of opposites” and after considering the concept, I’ve found that to me, living life in accordance to the tension of opposites is living where life pulls you forward and back. There should never be a moment where life is fully constant. There …show more content…
Living through hardships can tend to be detrimental, where these events shape us in a way that can’t be described as anything but bad. But after reading Morrie’s life story and seeing what he went through, I see that a person doesn’t truly live until they’ve dealt with something that hurts them in some way. But they can’t just go through the difficult moments. They have to learn and acknowledge those moments before truly understanding how to live and that pitying yourself does nothing but promote more negativity. Morrie said that he didn’t allow himself to pity because he “concentrated on the good things still in his life” (Albom 57) rather than spend all day worrying about his hardships and pain. He exemplifies the ideal way to trudge through painful moments, understanding that it may be difficult to live life without self-pity but also doable. One of the other hardest parts of death and facing it is the fear of relationships ending. Once we die, we lose our connections with people because we aren’t physically able to maintain them, but “death ends a life, not a relationship” (Albom 174). The worst feeling possible is knowing that you’ve lost a relationship. It’s even worse when you know that there’s no way it can be repaired. But
Howard Schultz stated, “In times of adversity and change, we really discover who we are and what we’re made of “. Adversity is a time when everything seems to be very bad. It is a time where most want to give up because it is too hard for them to go on. Morrie Schwartz and Elie Wiesel are both faced with adversity, but in different ways. In the novel, Tuesdays with Morrie, written by Mitch Albom, Morrie is faced with a disease that is killing him. In the novel, Night, written by Elie Wiesel, Elie, himself, is faced with death and does not really know he is facing death. Both men are facing a huge difficulties, but they both handled it in different ways. Morrie and Elie are both faced with adversity, but they both use faith and other people
In today’s prevalent culture, many people often seem to rate their life following a scale set by society. However, in a New York Times bestseller, Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom, the main character Morrie Schwartz personifies the true meaning of life. Morrie, in this heartfelt memoir, is a walking character of his own aphorisms. While it may seem that Morrie is accepting his diagnosis, he strives everyday to live his life to the fullest.
Adversity is described by Dictionary.com as “adverse or unfavorable fortune or fate; a condition marked by a misfortune, calamity, or distress.” Adversity can happen everywhere among us and can take the chance to hit us when we are having a good day. In the books Tuesdays with Morrie and Night, adversity hits these characters hard. In Tuesdays with Morrie, the author Mitch Albom writes about his experience with his beloved college professor, Morrie Schwartz, and Morrie’s battles with a disease called ALS. In Night, the author and the main character, Elie Wiesel, goes through adversity as well at a concentration camp during the Holocaust. Handling the adversity is rather difficult, especially when we want to give up after we are hit with a traumatic blow. However, these characters in these two completely different books, show that adversity cannot bring them down.
Hardships have the power to make a break a person, as Roman poet, Horace, once said, “Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant”. Everyone has or will have to face adversity at some point in their lives, it is a universal truth. Although misfortunes usually have a negative connotation, depending on the struggle and how one deals with it, it is likely the person will come out of misfortune better prepared for the world. Contrastly, if a person never experienced any hardships, they would lack a sophisticated understanding of the world and lack the ability to handle difficult situations. Adversity gives people strength they can not obtain with success.
All three of the authors use literary devices in their own way to do a variety of things, whether that be getting a certain message across, exaggerating something, or showing the narrator’s reactions to certain things. In all three of the stories, the authors make use of flashbacks. In Big Boy, the author provides a flashback of his mother telling him that everyone defecates. He does this to show the reader that he understands that fecal matter is normal, but he still doesn’t want to be blamed for the situation he was in. In Tuesday’s with Morrie, several flashbacks are provided between all the chapters to give the reader some insight as to how Mitch and Morrie’s friendship grew. In The Last Lecture, the author talks about his days playing football as a teenager and he often references back to things his coach did. He talks about his coach’s antics in order to get across that everything can be a learning experience.
Throughout life, one encounters difficulties and hardships regardless of their age, race, or place in society. These difficulties range from struggling in a sport or a class to overcoming the loss of a loved one. As a result of these times of sorrow and adversities, one might feel as if their life stops, or that hope is unattainable. For instance, I have endured countless ordeals. Some not as hard as others, but all of them greatly impact my outlook of life and like many others, I will continue to face these hardships.
Throughout the book, Tuesdays with Morrie, you encounter many different characters that mold the story into what it is. The characters that draw the most attention are, of course, Morrie Schwartz, Mitch Albom, and Morrie's father, Charlie. These three characters all have unique characteristics that rely on one another to create a life-altering story. Morrie Schwartz, a man that everyone fell in love with the second they met him. Throughout the book we discover that Morrie was not just your average teacher, he was a “life teacher,” meaning that his lessons focused on what truly mattered.
When was the last time that you had a true heart to heart with someone? When did you last truly feel an emotion? How many times have you sent a laugh to someone through the phone without even smirking? The world we live in is becoming less and less human. As technologies develop we develop with them and find ourselves to be lost without electronics. This is leading us down a path that will dehumanize the modern population leaving the human race more like robots. I believe that Tuesdays with Morrie may be able to help change the path that we are on.
It is inevitable that we will all die it is a fact that everyone must come to terms with. There comes a time in everyone’s life that they must face death; a friend’s tragic accident, a family member’s passing or their own battles with diseases. When faced with the idea of death people will act in different ways some may find it therapeutic to apologize for the negative they have done, some may want to spend time with loved ones to ease the future pain, and others may decide that their life was not what they believed. The story Death Constant Beyond Love tells us about a man named Senator Sanchez who is living a happy life with his wife and five kids. That is until he is told by doctors that he only has a short time to live. Death is
Throughout the 20th and 21st century race relations have been a substantial issue. Some issues have went through trial, and others have not. Even today in society, race related matters are still continuing. One is being targeted for the color of their skin, the traditional clothes they wear, and the principals they believe in. Many trials have been brought to court but there are an abundance of other situations that have not been brought to the eyes of others.
by his father never to talk about her. It was a terrible burden to Morrie.
to govern much of the individual’s behavior. The most extreme case of drug use is the