Tuesdays with Morrie - Movie reflection

         Tuesdays with Morrie is one of the movies that brought me to tears while watching it. No matter how I suppress my feelings and sentiments but the tears are unstoppable. It really came out. I’ve tried not to be obvious since I know my classmates would make fun of me. It’s hard to pretend by rubbing my eyes. It was hardly managed.

            I read the book before and in contrast to the movie, I’m surprised that the movie is really trying to be consistent with the facts and contents of the book. And at the same time the film added a conflict which I think was not written on the book. The film added the flavour of love on the storyline which I think brought thrill and excitement.

It is one of a kind inspirational film that teaches a lot of lessons about life. There are a lot of important points to cover but I’d rather highlight some beautiful scenes. I would pick those scenes that made an impact into my life as a human being and as a religious seminarian.

First is the line, “when you know how to die, you know how to live”.  Death is part of human existence and part of being a finite being. In my life I sometimes wonder how I will die. I’ve heard deaths from TV news and newspapers and there are many reasons of deaths. Some have died accidentally, intentionally and some have died of old age. These kinds of reasons bring uneasiness and fear into me. There are a lot of ‘what-ifs’ and one that really scares me is to die because of old age. As I imagine it, it’s hard to deal death especially if it is prolonging the agony or the pains of the body. However, the line above teaches me not to fear about it. It is a matter of accepting death as part of life and then when we accept that truth we learn then how to live life worthily. As the movie continues, we must think that to have reached old age is not decaying but growing. We grow of wisdom as we get old. The body is only a container of our soul, wherein the feelings of the self are not stored.

Second important message that I’d like to share is about relationship with the people around us. It is about being dependent to persons not materially but spiritually. When we were still infant we need our parents to nourish and nurture us and when are about to die we still need others to take care for us. But the single line between those two important endpoints of our life lays the most essential, being with others. We must have friends as many as we could for they can only be the persons who can help us and sustain us as a relational being. Just like the dates written on the epitaph in tombs, the date of birth and the date of death are written but between those dates is a single and small dash that represents how we have lived life. The dash is small but it contains great memories and experiences in life. We can forget the dates but not the memories with the person we’ve once loved and always be loved.