BRB, READING 'TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE'

I feel like such a middle schooler for even admitting this on the Internet, but I'm totally reading 'Tuesdays with Morrie' by Mitch Albom right now.

This is not to rag on Mitch at all (you do you, buddy!). I'm actually really enjoying this book better the second time around. I remember reading it as a kid and thinking that it had such depth and meaning to it; of course, it's only just now that I'm older that I'm really understanding it. As a 13-year old, it's hard to find depth in a book about a dying man when you yourself feel like you'll never die.

One of my favorite parts in the book has definitely been the chapter on aging and why not to fear it. I'm only 22, so I'm not quite there yet, but I often hear women who are older than me lamenting their age and the fact that they're "sooooo olllld" now. This bothers me for a few reasons:

a) My mom had me when she was 40, and I'm the eldest child in my family - there's that for some perspective on age.

b) People age! It's just what we do! It's not something to be sad, annoyed, or ashamed about.

& c) Aging isn't a bad thing.

While I'm not necessarily anxious for my body to decay, I'm absolutely pumped for my span of knowledge to increase. Think of all the cool things you get to do, and learn, and experience as you age! And if we're all being honest, being young doesn't trump everything - it kind of sucks most of the time, because you have no confidence and no idea what you're doing.

This particular part of 'Tuesdays with Morrie' really sums it up for me:

Morrie had aging in better perspective.

"All this emphasis on youth - I don't buy it," he said. "Listen, I know what misery being young can be, so don't tell me it's so great. All these kids who came to me with their struggles, their strife, their feelings of inadequacy, their sense that life was miserable, so bad they wanted to kill themselves...
"And, in addition to all the miseries, the youth are not wise. They have very little understanding about life. Who wants to live every day when you don't know what's going on? When people are manipulating you, telling you to buy this perfume and you'll be beautiful, or this pair of jeans and you'll be sexy - and you believe them! It's such nonsense."

"Weren't you every afraid of growing old?", I asked.

"Mitch, I embrace aging."

"Embrace it?"

"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."

It's a solid book, you guys. And if you so happen to be moved back in with your parents and find it on the ground under your bed (as I did), I highly recommend picking it up and reading it again.

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PS, ^this^ is Morrie Schwartz, and he is a cool dude.