My Book of Wisdom

Chapter 3: The Fourth Tuesday

I chose The Fourth Tuesday because it's death.

We all face it eventually, no matter what we do to try and avoid it. Don't smoke. Don't drink. Don't take risks. Whatever we do, from the moment we're born, we begin to die. We all must face it. For some people, it follows us around like a dark cloud, and we wait, prepared to die at any given moment. For others, we refuse to believe that we aren't guaranteed tomorrow, we convince ourselves that we have tomorrow, that we'll do it tomorrow. It really depends on who you are. I knew before I read it that we all die. It's the circle of life. You're born. You live. You die. I admit, that sounds really, really dull, but it's the truth.

The thing that I contemplated while reading this is it's so much like The Third Tuesday. The theme is sorta the same. Everyone dies, humans are just too stubborn to admit it. We don't want to confront the fact that we will die. One of my favorite lines from the movie RED with Bruce Willis is where the hero and heroine are trying to find out why a New York Times reporter was murdered with the help of their friend. The friend says, "Do you know what's wrong with this country?" and the heroine responds with, "They're all trying to kill us?" "Exactly!" In countries like Mexico and Spain, they embrace death. In our country, we hide from it. Pretending like it doesn't exist. Shielding ourselves from the fact that eventually, we will turn to dust. This world is trying to kill us. If you're smart, you'll know how. If not, . . . oh well (I'm not saying you're stupid, just that you don't know how or why).

Mitch learned that Morrie is more religious than he used to be. Morrie grew up Jewish, but sorta renounced his religion once he left high school. Now Morrie believes in something. I learned about the tension of opposites. I know Morrie talks about this in earlier chapters, but it works in this way: we know we're going to die, but we refuse to acknowledge it. If we acknowledged it, we would act like every day was our last. We would behave different, just like Morrie said we would.

The thing that is important from this chapter is that every action has a reaction. Think about what you're doing before you do it. If you act weird, that's what people will see you as. If you say something without "filtering" it first, you'll embarrass yourself. The Bible says in Galatians 6:7, "Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap."