A Letter to Morrie Shwartz

To: Morrie Schwartz Hi Morrie! After I learned about your story, I was really touched. Your philosophies and ideas were so transcendent; I felt as though I was learning the story about some higher being. I learned a lot about the meaning of life and what things are really important to me in my life. It helped me see a lot of things I couldn’t see in other people nowadays. Morrie, I have to admit that you’re one of the most gently living people I know. While reading your story, I wondered why everyone didn’t know about your views on life; why it wasn’t known to me until this English class. It really started to dawn on me how lightly we take the time we have in our lives and how little we love and live to the fullest.
I feel that your belief in “when we learn how to die, we learn how to live” was really enlightening and true. As I read your philosophies on death and aging, you really described aging as not something to be hated and feared, but something to be embraced. You thought of it as more knowledge and experience, and had no reason to be jealous of young people; why be jealous of a man who is 40 when you’ve already been there? This idea really changed my thoughts on aging. Another belief of yours that I admired was the bird perched on your shoulder. Though it wasn’t your philosophy, it changed me a lot to try harder in life. I ask myself each day whether or not I would be satisfied with dying at the end of the day. From this idea, I thought of each time I sleep as me dying, but being reborn in the morning and starting the day anew. However, some days I’m just really unsatisfied, and that’s okay, but I will always try my best to have a great day every day. When you had one of your early conversations catching up with Mitch after so many years, I found your outlook on people’s everyday lives to be very true. In the past few months, I found myself very unsatisfied with how I was doing in school and keeping my body active. I had many unsatisfied days and