Morrie's Quotes

"There is no formula to relationships. They have to be negotiated in loving ways, with room for both parties, what they want and what they need, what they can do and what their life is like."

"The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in."

"It's not to late to... ask yourself if you really are the person you want to be, and if not, who you do want to be. "

"Forgive yourself before you die. Then forgive others."

"Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live."

"You closed your eyes. That was the difference. Sometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them too-even when you are in the dark. Even when you're falling."

"As you grow old, 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, its also the positive that you understand you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it."

"Death ends a life, not a relationship."

"...if you're trying to show off for people at the top, forget it. They will look down on you anyhow. And if you're trying to show off for people at the bottom, forget it. They will only envy you. Status will get you nowhere. Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone."

People are only mean when they're threatened, and that's what our culture does...And when you get threatened, you start looking out only for yourself. You start making money a god. It is all part of this culture."

Don't hang on too long, but don't let go too soon."

Detachment

"What I’m doing now is detaching myself from the experience."

Detaching yourself?

"Yes. Detaching yourself. And this is important - not just for someone like me, who is dying, but for someone like you, who is perfectly healthy. Learn to detach."
…

But wait, I said. Aren't you always talking about experiencing life? All the good emotions, all the bad ones?

"Yes."

Well, how can you do that if you're detached?"

"… 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…. 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. … I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment."
…

"Same for loneliness: you let go, let the tears flow, feel it completely - but eventually be able to say, 'All right, that was my moment with loneliness. I'm not afraid of feeling lonely, but now I'm going to put that loneliness aside and know that there are other emotions in the world, and I’m going to experience them as well." - p.104

看Tuesday with Morrie猶如經歷好朋友的生離死別一樣，我剛好是在2000年11月6日，Rebecca逝世一周年當天看到有關Morrie在11月4日去世的章節，害我看畢該書就坐在床邊大哭一場，最印象深刻的一段是Detachment。

抽離前，須先全身投入，那才會無憾！