We share Morrie's lasting gift with the world

I've been thinking about "Selling Sickness " 《The global drug giants are no longer content with selling medicines only to the ill. As Wall Street knows well, there is a lot of money to be made telling healthy people that they're sick. 》 I've noticed this tendency.

That reminds me of "Tuesdays with Morrie" This book provides us with profound wisdom and insight. This is a true story that shines and leaves us forever warmed by its afterglow.

--Excerpt from Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson. The book was the result of his visits with his former professor, Morrie Schwartz.

Morrie believed in the inherent good of people. But he also saw what they could become. "People are only mean when they're threatened," he said later that day, "and that's what our culture does. That's what our economy does. Even people who have jobs in our economy are threatened, because they worry about losing them. 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." He exhaled. "Which is why I don't buy into it."

"Here's what I mean by building your own little subculture," Morrie said, "I don't mean you disregard every rule of your community. I don't go around naked, for example. I don't run through red lights. The little things, I can obey. But the big things- how we think, what we value- those you must choose yourself. You can't let anyone- or any society- determine those for you.

"Take my condition. The things I am supposed to be embarrassed about now- not being able to walk, not being able to wipe may ass, waking up some mornings wanting to cry- there is nothing innately embarrassing or shaming about them.

"It's the same for women not being thin enough, or men not being rich enough. It's just what our culture would have you believe. Don't believe it."

I asked Morrie why he hadn't move somewhere else when he was younger. "Where?" I don't know. South America. New Guinea. Some place not as selfish as America.

"Every society has its own problems," Morrie said, lifting his eyebrows, the closest he could come to a shrug.

"The way to do it, I think, isn't to run away. You have to work at creating your own culture.

"Look, no matter where you live, the biggest defect we human beings have is our shortsightedness. We don't see what we could be. We should be looking at our potential, stretching ourselves into everything we can become. But if you're surrounded by people who say 'I want mine now,' you end up with a few people with everything and a military to keep the poor ones from rising up and stealing it.

"The problem, Mitch, is that we don't believe we are as much alike as we are. Whites and blacks, Catholics and Protestants, men and women. If we saw each other as more alike, we might be very eager to join in one big human family in this world, and to care about that family the way we care about our own.

"But believe me, when you are dying, you see it is true. We all have the same beginning- birth- and we all have the same end- death. So how different can we be?

"Invest in the human family. Invest in people. Build a little community of those you love and who love you." He squeezed my hand gently. I squeezed back harder.

Written by Mitch Albom (1958-) American sportswriter, lyricist