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.

Mitch Albom

Categorized in : Commitment Life Tuesdays With Morrie

Hello, Edward. I've been waiting for you. by Mitch Albom

Hello, Edward. I've been waiting for you.

waiting-for-you hello waiting

All that happens when your dreams come true is a slow, melting realization that it wasn't what you thought.

melting realization dream

She had a bottomless well of love for me. by Mitch Albom

She had a bottomless well of love for me.

one-more-day wells

I feel ashamed now that I tried to take my life. It is such a precious thing. I had no one to talk me out of my despair and that was a mistake. You need to keep people close. You need to give them access to your heart.

mistake heart people

You can be a mama's boy, be a daddy's boy, but you can't be both. So you cling to the one you think you might lose.

daddy boys thinking

The backside of a mountain is a fight against human nature. You have to care as much about yourself on the way down as you did on the way up.

mountain care fighting

There is everything you know and there is everything that happens. When the two do not line up, you make a choice.

lines choices two

There's a big confusion in this country over what we want versus what we need," Morrie said. "You need food, you want a chocolate sundae. 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. It's not so hard.

sports mean country

The problem, Mitch, is that we don't believe we are as much alike as we are. Whites and blacks, Catholics and Protestants, men and women. 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. But believe me, when you are dying, you see it is true. 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. Morrie Schwartz

love men believe

There is no point in keeping vengeance or stubbornness. These things" -he sighed- "these things I so regret in my life. Pride. Vanity. Why do we do the things we do? Morrie Schwartz

vanity regret pride

I traded lots of dreams for a bigger paycheck, and I never even r... by Mitch Albom

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

paychecks bigger dream

Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do somehing 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.

hurt life-is want

My father moved through theys of we, singing each new leaf out of each tree, (and every child was sure that spring danced when she heard my father sing).

spring father children

I believe the biggest themes of life are put into the best focus when held up against the very sharp light of mortality.

focus light believe

my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways"... by Mitch Albom

my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways" from the book of Isaiah

bible book way

After the Israelites safely crossed the Red Sea, the Egyptians chased after them and were drowned. God's angels wanted to celebrate the enemy's demise. God saw this and grew angry. He said, in essence, 'Stop celebrating. For they are my children,too.

angel sea children

There is no formula to relationships. by Mitch Albom

There is no formula to relationships.

formulas

I'm in love with hope. by Mitch Albom

I'm in love with hope.

The second death. To think that you died and no one would remember you. I wondered if this was why we tried so hard to make our mark in America. To be known. Think of how important celebrity has become. We sing to get famous; expose our worst secrets to get famous; lose weight, eat bugs, even commit murder to get famous. Our young people post their deepest thoughts on public web sites. They run cameras from their bedrooms. It’s as if we are screaming Notice Me! Remember Me! Yet the notoriety barely lasts. Names quickly blur and in time are forgotten.

faith running thinking

The years after graduation hardened me into someone quite different from the strutting graduate who left campus that day headed for New York city, ready to offer the world his talent. The world, I discovered. was not all that interested.

cities new-york years