Présentation de l'éditeur
"Learn how to live and you'll know how to die; learn how to die, and you'll know how to live."
In these remarkable pages are the profound, life-affirming words of Morrie Schwartz as he faced his own imminent death.
In 1994, at the age of seventy-seven, Schwartz learned he had ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Undaunted, the former professor embraced his illness, choosing to live passionately and calmly until the end. He also embarked on his greatest teaching adventure: sharing his evolving knowledge of living while dying.
With warmth, wisdom, and humor, Morrie reveals how to:
-- live fully in the moment
-- tap into the powers of the mind to transcend physical limitations
-- grieve for your losses
-- reach out to family and friends
-- develop an inner space for meditation and spiritual connection.
It's never too late to become the kind of person you'd like to be. Morrie shows the way in his magnificent legacy of love, forgiveness, transcendence, and redemption, a guide to living fully to the end of your days.
Morrie's willingness to talk about his illness made him an inspiration. In 1995 Nightline ran three interviews in which Ted Koppel spoke to Morrie about life, death and the disease that was afflicting his body.
In Morrie: In His Own Words, Morrie combined inspiring lessons with practical advice to help those who have chronic or terminal sickness and to help those close to them maintain healthy emotions and loving relationships. As life-affirming as it is life-releasing, Morrie: In His Own Words will have a profound effect on generations of readers.
Extrait
INTRODUCTION
Paul Solman
His name: Morris Schwartz. "But call me Morrie," he insisted, even to Ted Koppel, who obliged on three Nightline specials in 1995, half-hour interviews which helped make this wise old man a national icon.
Morrie's reason for appearing on network television was as straightforward as the man himself: At age seventy-eight, more fully alive than ever, Morrie was dying -- of a degenerative disease known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig's disease. And though actually a rather humble guy, Morrie realized he could use the media for one final accomplishment in an achievement-filled life: to flush death out of the closet, to help people talk openly about illness, decay, and the end we all share.
"Learn how to live," Morrie wrote, "and you'll know how to die; learn how to die, and you'll know how to live." Morrie's message was not only for the sick and those close to them, but for the healthy as well. His was a way of looking at the world, a point of view he expressed on Nightline, in the Boston Globe, and on radio and television nationwide.
And people responded, powerfully. Morrie struck a nerve. Hundreds of viewers, listeners, and readers wrote to him -- for advice, for comfort, but most of all to thank him for giving a voice to issues they have been struggling with in silence.
After all, here was a man with a disease that destroys, without exception, the ability of nerves to signal muscles. The muscles stop working and atrophy, in Morrie's case starting with the legs. Then you die.
But Morrie's response to the death sentence was to create a sort of living memorial service. A joyous one. He watched Marx Brothers movies, steeped himself in all the humor he could find. He let friends know he wanted them to visit. And he began writing the aphorisms which form the core of this book.
The book is, in a sense, Morrie's last will and testament -- of how to live passionately and calmly, right to the end. As he lost muscle function he handwrote the aphorisms ever more slowly and unsteadily, but with surer and surer conviction. He thought at first they could stand on their own without elaboration. But he came to realize that most readers need help putting them into practice. The aphorisms are written in a sort of how-to shorthand: They're mantras that, by themselves, can seem as formidable as
