Tuesdays with Morrie

Tuesdays with Morrie is a beautifully written book by Mitch Albom. On the writer’s part, this book deals with Erikson’s identity versus role confusion stage of psychosocial development. This book is a result of partly an effort to compensate for the guilt of not being able to fulfill the perceived duty or responsibility towards friends and families and partly an effort to find identity within the competitive and ambitious self. The primary character (Morrie) is living the final days of his life with integrity. Morrie is dealing with his own upcoming, overtly anticipated death. Mitch, having dealt with the death of his uncle, and near-death of his estranged brother due to cancer, takes every opportunity to talk to Morrie to find meaning in his own life. Morrie has fewer regrets in life, and wants to reach to as many people as he can to communicate his opinions about life, and what matters the most at the end of the life. Morrie concludes compassion, forgiveness, love, support and care for each other are more important than expensive car, big houses and unlimited wealth.

Despite his parents’ request to study law or medicine, Mitch graduated from the college aspiring to become a musician. He moved to the New York City with the same ambition. Mitch’s parents had a lawyer and a physician as his possible self. On the other hand, Mitch had created a different possible self of himself- a successful musician. Even after trying hard for a while, he wasn’t able to make things fall into his tray. In the mean time, he saw his uncle die from pancreatic cancer at a very early age. He saw failure, pain, and death all at once; and realized he wasn’t immune to these things. Actually he felt them very close, and time was running out before he could do anything to defeat them.

Mitch gave up his possible self, and studied journalism to become a sports columnist. He had a possible self who was surrounded by fans, and chased by reporters. Instead, he took an occupation