RXO

I buried myself in accomplishments, because with accomplishments, I believed I could control things, I could squeeze in every last piece of happiness before I got sick and died, like my uncle before me, which I figured was my natural fate...

I traded lots of dreams for a bigger paycheck, and I never even realised I was doing it.

Dying is only one thing to be sad over, Mitch.

Living unhappily is something else.

The culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves...

You have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it. Create your own.

Most people can't do it.

Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn't. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted.

A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. And most of us live somewhere in the middle.

So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things.

The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.

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

We think we don't deserve love, we think if we let it in we'll become too soft.

But a wise man named Levine said it right. He said, "Love is the only rational act."

I give myself a good cry if I need it. But then I concentrate on all the good things still in my life. On the people who are coming to see me. On the stories I'm going to hear. On you.

Mitch, I don't allow myself any more self-pity than that. A little each morning, a few tears, and that's all.

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're in the dark. Even when you're falling.

Mitch, the culture doesn't encourage you to think about such things until you're about to die.

We're so wrapped up with egoistical things, career, family, having enough money, meeting the mortgage, getting a new car, fixing the radiator when it breaks - we're involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going.

So we don't get into the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying, Is this all? Is this all I want? Is something missing? You need someone to probe you in that direction. It won't just happen automatically.

To know you're going to die, and to be prepared for it at any time. That's better. That way you can actually be more involved in your life while you're living.

Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, "Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be? Is today the day I die?"

You strip away all that stuff and you focus on the essentials. When you realise you are going to die, you see everything much differently.

Learn how to die, and you learn how to live.

If you really listen to that bird on your shoulder, if you accept that you can die at any time - then you might not be as ambitious as you are.

The things you spend so much time on - all this work you do - might not seem as important. You might have to make room for some more spiritual things.

We are too involved in materialistic things, and they don't satisfy us. The loving relationships we have, the universe around us, we take these for granted.

The fact is, there is no foundation, no secure ground, upon which people may stand today if it isn't the family.

It's become quite clear to me as I've been sick. If you don't have the support and love and caring and concern that you get from a family, you don't have much at all.

Love is so supremely important. As our great poet Auden said, "Love each other or perish." Without love, we are birds with broken wings.

There is no experience like having children. That's all. There is no substitute for it. You cannot do it with a friend. You cannot do it with a lover.

If you want the experience of having complete responsibility for another human being, and to learn how to love and bond in the deepest way, then you should have children.

Learn to detach. Don't cling to things, because everything is impermanent. 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.

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. And only then can you say, "All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognise that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment. Step away from it. Step away."

Turn on the faucet. Wash yourself with the emotion. It won't hurt you. It will only help.

If you let the fear inside, if you pull it on like a familiar shirt, then you can say to yourself, "All right, it's just fear, I don't have to let it control me. I see it for what it is."

If aging were so valuable, why do people always say, "Oh, if I were young again."

You know what that reflects? Unsatisfied lives. Unfulfilled lives. Lives that haven't found meaning. Because if you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to see more, do more. You can't wait until sixty-five.

All younger people should know something. If you're always battling against getting older, you're always going to be unhappy because it will happen anyhow. The fact is, you are going to die eventually. It won't matter what you tell yourself.

Accept who you are and revel in that. This is your time to be in your thirties. I had my time to be in my thirties, and now is my time to be seventy-eight.

You have to find what's good and true and beautiful in your life as it is now. Looking back makes you competitive. And, age is not a competitive issue.

We put our values in the wrong things. And it leads to very disillusioned lives.

We've got a form of brainwashing going on... they repeat something over and over. Owning things is good. More money is good. More property is good. More commercialism is good. More is good. More is good. We repeat it - and have it repeated to us - over and over until nobody bothers to even think otherwise.

The average person is so fogged up by all this, he has no perspective on what's really important anymore.

Whenever I went in my life, I met people wanting to gobble up something new.

These were people so hungry for love that they were accepting substitutes. They were embracing material things and expecting a sort of hug back. But it never works.

You can't substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship. Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness.

You have to be honest with yourself. You don't need the latest sports car, you don't need the biggest house.

The truth is, you don't get satisfaction from those things. You know what really gives you satisfaction? Offering others what you have to give. I don't mean money, Mitch. I mean your time. Your concern. Your storytelling.

There are plenty of places to do this. You don't need to have a big talent.

Remember what I said about finding a meaningful life?

Devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.

You notice there's nothing in there about a salary... a smokescreen.

Mitch, if you're trying to show off for people at the top, forget it. They will look down at 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.

Do the kinds of things that come from the heart. When you do, you won't be dissatisfied, you won't be envious, you won't be longing for somebody else's things. On the contrary, you'll be overwhelmed with what comes back.

Part of the problem, Mitch, is that everyone is in such a hurry. People haven't found meaning in their lives, so they're running all the time looking for it.

They think the next car, the next house, the next job. Then they find those things are empty, too, and they keep running.

There are a few rules I know to be true about love and marriage.

If you don't respect the other person, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. If you don't know how to compromise, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. If you don't have a common set of values in life, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. Your values must be alike.

And the biggest one of those values... your belief in the importance of your marriage.

People only become mean when they're threatened 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, which is why I don't buy into it.

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. It's just what our culture would have you believe. Don't believe it.

Every society has its own problems. 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 being 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.

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.

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.

Mitch, there is no point in keeping vengeance or stubbornness. These things, these things I so regret in my life. Pride. Vanity. Why do we do the things we do?

It's not just other people we need to forgive Mitch, we also need to forgive ourselves. For all the things we didn't do. All the things we should have done.

You can't get stuck on the regrets of what should have happened. Make peace. You need to make peace with yourself and everyone around you. Forgive yourself. Forgive others.

Don't wait, Mitch. Not everyone gets the time I'm getting. Not everyone is as lucky.

I glanced up and saw the most intense look in his eyes.

I don't know why you came back to me. But I want to say this... if I could have had another son, I would have liked it to be you.

I dropped my eyes, kneading the dying flesh of his feet between my fingers. For a moment, I felt afraid, as if accepting his words would somehow betray my own father. But when I looked up, I saw Morrie smiling through tears and I knew there was no betrayal in a moment like this.

All I was afraid of was saying goodbye.

As long as we can love each other, and remember the feeling of love we had, we can die without ever really going away.

All the love you created is still there. All the memories are still there. You live on - in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here.

Death ends a life, not a relationship.

There is no formula in 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.

In business, people negotiate to win. They negotiate to get what they want. Maybe you're too used to that.

Love is different. Love is when you are as concerned about someone else's situation as you are about your own. You've had these special times with your brother, and you no longer have what you had with him. You want them back. You never want them to stop. But that's part of being human. Stop, renew, stop, renew. You'll find a way back to your brother.

How do you know?

You found me, didn't you?

He patted my hand weakly, keeping it on his chest. "This... is how we say... good-bye..." He breathed softly, in and out, I could feel his ribcage, rise and fall.

Then he looked right at me. "Love... you," he rasped.

I love you, too, Coach.

"Know you do... know... something else... You... always have..." His eyes got small, and then he cried, his face contorting like a baby who hasn't figured how his tear ducts work.

I held him close for several minutes. I rubbed his loose skin. I stroked his hair. I put a palm against his face and felt the bones close to the flesh and the tiny wet tears, as if squeezed from a dropper.

"You talk, I'll listen," he had said.

I tried doing that in my head and, to my happiness, found that the imagined conversation felt almost natural. I looked down at my hands, saw my watch and realised why.

It was Tuesday.

Have you ever really had a teacher? One who saw you as a raw but precious thing, a jewel that, with wisdom, could be polished to a proud shine?

If you are lucky enough to find your way to such teachers, you will always find your way back.

Sometimes it is only in your head. Sometimes it is right alongside their beds.