Morrie

... The small horrors of his illness were growing, and when I finally sat down with Morrie,
he was coughing more than usual, a dry, dusty cough that shook his chest and made his
head jerk forward. After one violent surge, he stopped, closed his eyes, and took a
breath. I sat quietly because I thought he was recovering from his exertion.
 “Is the tape on?” he said suddenly, his eyes still closed.
 Yes, yes, I quickly said, pressing down the play and record buttons.
 “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 too busy being afraid. You’re afraid of the pain, 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.’”
 Morrie stopped and looked me over, perhaps to make sure I was getting this right.
 “I know you think this is just about dying,” he said, “but it’s like I keep telling you. When
you learn how to die, you learn how to live.”
 Morrie talked about his most fearful moments, when he felt his chest locked in heaving
surges or when he wasn’t sure where his next breath would come from. These were
horrifying times, he said, and his first emotions were horror, fear, anxiety. But once he
recognized the feel of those emotions, their texture, their moisture, the shiver down the
back, the quick flash of heat that crosses your brain—then he was able to say, “Okay.
This is fear. Step away from it. Step away.”
 I thought about how often this was needed in everyday life. How we feel lonely,
sometimes to the point of tears, but we don’t let those tears come because we are not
supposed to cry. Or how we feel a surge of love for a partner but we don’t say anything
because we’re frozen with the fear of what those words might do to the relationship.
 Morrie’s approach was exactly the opposite. Turn on the faucet. Wash yourself with
the emotion. It won’t hurt you. It will only help. If you let the fear inside, if you pull it on
like a familiar shirt, then you can say to yourself, “All right, it’s just fear, I don’t have to let
it control me. I see it for what it is.”
 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 as well.”
 “Detach,” Morrie said again.
 He closed his eyes, then coughed. Then he coughed again.
 Then he coughed again, more loudly.
 Suddenly, he was half-choking, the congest...


Libro: Tuesdays with Morrie
Autor: Mitch Albom
Imagen: https://weheartit.com/