When you learn how to die, you learn how to live

Mitch Albom: Tuesdays with Morrie

”The truth is, Mitch,” he said, ”once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.”
I nodded.
“I’m going to say it again,” he said. “Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.”

“Most of us all walk around as if we’re sleepwalking. We really don’t experience the world fully, because we’re half-asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do.”
And facing death changes all of that?
“Oh, yes. You strip away all that stuff and you focus on the essentials. When you realize you are going to die, you see everything much differently.” He sighed. “Learn how to die, and you learn how to live.”

“What I’m doing now,” he continued, his eyes still closed, “ is detaching myself from the experience.”
Detaching yourself?
“Yes. Detaching myself. And this is important- not just for someone like me, who is dying, but for someone like you, who is perfectly healthy. Learn to detach.”
He opened his eyes. He exhaled.
“You know what the Buddhists say? Don’t cling to things, because everything is impermanent.”
But wait, I said. Aren’t you always talking about experiencing life? All the good emotions, all the bad ones?
“Yes.”
Well, how can you do that if you’re detached?
“Ah, you’re thinking, Mitch. But detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That’s how you are able to leave it.”
I’m lost.
“Take any emotion – love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I’m going through, fear and pain, from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions- if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them- you can never get to being detached, you’re afraid of the grief. You’re afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails.
But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, ‘All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment.’
Same for loneliness: you let go, let the tears flow, feel it completely- but eventually be able to say, ‘All right, that was my moment with loneliness. I’m not afraid of feeling lonely, but now I’m going to put that loneliness aside and know that there are other emotions in the world, and I’m going to experience them all as well’.”

“It’s very simple. As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two, you’d always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It’s growth. It’s more than the negative that you’re going to die, it’s also the positive that you understand you’re going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.”
Yes, I said, but if aging were so valuable, why do people always say, ‘Oh, if I were young again.’ You never hear people say, ‘I wish I was sixty-five.’
He smiled. “You know what that reflects? Unsatisfied lives. Unfulfilled lives. Lives that haven’t found meaning. Because if you’ve found meaning in your life, you don’t want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to see more, do more. You can’t wait until sixty-five.”

“You have to find what’s good and true and beautiful in your life as it is now. Looking back makes you competitive. And, age is not a competitive issue.
The truth is, part of me is every age. I’m a three-year-old, I’m a five-year-old, I’m a thirty-seven-year-old, I’m a fifty-year-old. I’ve been through all of them, and I know what it’s like. I delight in being a child when it’s appropriate to be a child. I delight in being a wise old man when it’s appropriate to be a wise old man. Think of all I can be! I am every age, up to my own. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
“How can I be envious of where you are- when I’ve been there myself?”