Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom

tombstone," he said.

    I don't want to hear about tombstones. "Why? They make you nervous?"

    I shrugged.

    "We can forget it."

    No, go ahead. What did you decide?

    Morrie popped his lips. "I was thinking of this: A Teacher to the Last."

    He waited while I absorbed it.

    A Teacher to the Last.

    "Good?" he said.

    Yes, I said. Very good.

    I came to love the way Morrie lit up when I entered the room. He did this for many people, I know, but it was his special talent to make each visitor feel that the smile was unique.

    "Ahhhh, it's my buddy," he would say when he saw me, in that foggy, high-pitched voice. And it didn't stop with the greeting. When Morrie was with you, he was really with you. He looked you straight in the eye, and he listened as if you were the only person in the world. How much better would people get along if their first encounter each day were like this-instead of a grumble from a waitress or a bus driver or a boss?

    "I believe in being fully present," Morrie said. "That means you should be with the person you're with. When I'm talking to you now, Mitch, I try to keep focused only on what is going on between us. I am not thinking about something we said last week. I am not thinking of what's coming up this Friday. I am not thinking about doing another Koppel show, or about what medications I'm taking.

    "I am talking to you. I am thinking about you."

    I remembered how he used to teach this idea in the Group Process class back at Brandeis. I had scoffed back then, thinking this was hardly a lesson plan for a university course. Learning to pay attention? How important could that be? I now know it is more important than almost everything they taught us in college.

    Morrie motioned for my hand, and as I gave it to him, I felt a surge of guilt. Here was a man who, if he wanted, could spend every waking moment in self-pity, feeling his body for decay, counting his breaths. So many people with far smaller problems are so self-absorbed, their eyes glaze over if you speak for more than thirty seconds. They already have something else in mind-a friend to call, a fax to send, a lover they're daydreaming about. They only snap back to full attention when you finish talking, at which point they say "Uh-huh" or "Yeah, really" and fake their way back to the moment.

    "Part of the problem, Mitch, is that everyone is in such a hurry," Morrie said. "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."

    Once you start running, I said, it's hard to slow yourself down.

    "Not so hard," he said, shaking his head. "Do you know what I do? When someone wants to get ahead of me in traffic-when I used to be able to drive-I would raise my hand . . ."

    He tried to do this now, but the hand lifted weakly, only six inches.

    " . . . I would raise my hand, as if I was going to make a negative gesture, and then I would wave and smile. Instead of giving them the finger, you let them go, and you smile.

    "You know what? A lot of times they smiled back. "The truth is, I don't have to be in that much of a hurry with my car. I would rather put my energies into people."

    He did this better than anyone I'd ever known. Those who sat with him saw his eyes go moist when they spoke about something horrible, or crinkle in delight when they told him a really bad joke. He was always ready to openly display the emotion so often missing from my baby boomer generation. We are great at small talk: "What do you do?" "Where do you live?" But really listening to someone-without trying to sell them something, pick them up, recruit them, or get some kind of status in return-how often do we get this anymore? I believe many visitors in the last few months of Morrie's life were drawn not because of the attention they wanted to pay to him but because of the attention he paid to them. Despite his