Portraits of Life

 Giving Love

Morrie gives his love to everyone and is content with life. He feels healthy and making anyone smile gives him a purpose to live even if he is slowly suffering. He shows Mitch that love is better than material goods and money. When he is dying, he is surrounded by those who love and care for him during his most desperate time of need. He believes that love is essential for humans to give, take in and share their lives with others. Thus, without it we will suffer meaningless and unfulfilling lives.

    

         Relationships with Family and Friends

Love for family and friends is more important than career and money and without friends and family, life will be much harder to live as they give you support and love. They give you the secure ground to stand on. A relationship between family and friends cannot die if you truly love others and remember the distinctive feelings of warmth and tenderness from being able to love, give and take in love; you will still be in the hearts of the ones you love. Even death cannot break the bonds of love between relationships; love is immortal. Morrie, even on his death bed he is surrounded by the people he loves. He has a positive attitude towards his death.   

Death

This is a quote said by Professor Morrie. The interpretation of this is one must accept the possibility of one’s own death before he can truly appreciate what he has on earth. This prompts the urge to appreciate the values of life; bringing back the important things into perspective. Thus we learn to live our lives with no regrets. Morrie is halfway between life and death so he knows what to ‘pack’ on his journey; know how to live before he dies. It also strongly relates to the topic of death that Morrie teaches Mitch. Furthermore with Morrie dying, this topic is prominent from the very beginning. Morrie emphasizes how important to understand we will die and how it will benefit us for the remainder of our lives.

 

Forgiveness

Learning to forgive others and to forgive yourself is another lesson taught by Morrie. This poem by Sydni Masoncup evidently tells us we should forgive others but always remember the mistake we did and try not to do it again. You can’t get stuck on regrets on what happened. Morrie recalls a story about his old close friend Norman. When Norman and his wife moved away, Morrie’s wife, Charlotte had to undergo a serious operation, Norman never contacted them even though they knew about the situation. This leads to their relationship to crumble and they never contact Norman again. However, Norman tried to apologise and reconcile but Morrie obviously never accepted his apology because of his pride. Later, Norman died and Morrie regretted how he never forgave him. Therefore, Morrie sees there is no point in holding any kind of grudges and we need to forgive for the things we have done.  It is an important condition for happiness.