ve read another one of Author Mitch Albom’s books, The Five People You Meet In Heaven, and that was an interesting novel that I really enjoyed (read before I was reviewing everything, like now). Anyway, in this book (with the secondary title of “an old man, a young man, and life’s greatest lesson”) was a curious thing. At the time it made a big splash. A barista at the coffee house told me she cried while reading it. As for me? Well…

To start, Morrie Schwartz is an old college professor who discovers he has Lou Gehrig’s disease, a degenerative death sentence. Having had cancer myself, I can only imagine Morrie’s thoughts on it – and at least I could be saved by surgery. But Morrie is a doomed man. Having appeared on Ten Koppel’s show, Mr. Albom came to realize that his old professor was dying. In this, be began to fly in to see Morrie, every Tuesday. And there he sat at the withering feet of his prophet and learned all sorts of life lessons.

I can understand why the barista cried. The scenes of Morrie dealing with the humiliating loss of body was terrible to deal with. Anyone who has lost a loved one (or even a pet) knows what a heartbreak this is. But Morrie keeps a stiff upper lip and Mitch records his dead-man’s wisdom to share with us.

Okay,  I didn’t quite get the impact on this. It flew past me, I support.

One review I looked at (I was curious about why everyone was so thrilled with the book I found depressing yet not enlightening) noted that the lessons Morrie passed on in 1997 are now old. Over twenty-five years has passed, and every Hallmark movie, every show on TV, has characters learning to “live life to the fullest” and “make every day count”. We’ve had it drilled into us as every author passes that same message to us. It’s led, of course, to those silly bucket lists, as if checking off a location or event brings us understanding, peace and wisdom. I’m sorry to mention it, but it’s now “old hat”, just as the out-of-body philosophy of Johnathon Livingston Seagull is dated. And with all this, are we getting any wiser? Looking at the mess of our politics, the anger of social media, the flourishing of quackery, our twenty-year war in the Middle East, and all our huge cars and McMansions, no I don’t think we are living the simpler, fuller lives that Morrie preached.

And I guess that’s my problem with the book. Like Christianity, it’s made little difference to humanity as a whole. You can espouse such virtues, but few live up to them. And realizing this, all we are left with is a horrible story about an old man dying.

That’s my take, anyway.

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