Maurie, Mitch and me

Mitch Albom (pictured) was born in 1958. He’s a man of many talents, but he’s best known as an author with book sales of over 26M [1, 2]. His breakthrough book, tuesdays with Maurie: an old man, a young man, and life’s greatest lesson [3] dates from 1997. It’d passed me by – until recently when my darling sister Sue suggested I read it. So I did. It tackles some profound life issues [4], though cursorily and not head-on. But it’s sold 11M copies, so readers have spoken. Here are three edited excerpts:

The culture we have doesn’t make people feel good about themselves. We’re teaching the wrong things. You have to be strong enough to say that if the culture doesn’t work, don’t buy it. Create your own. But most people can’t do it.

So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important. This is because they’re chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, to your community around you, and to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.
We’ve got a form of brainwashing going on in our country. Do you know how they brainwash people? They repeat something over and over: Owning things is good. More money is good. More property is good. More commercialism is good. The average person is so fogged up by all this, he has no perspective on what’s really important anymore.