How It All Goes Down
The Twelfth Tuesday: We Talk About Forgiveness
- Morrie starts out this lesson on a rainy day with these words: "Forgive yourself before you die. Then forgive others" (23.1).
- Mitch is massaging Morrie's ankles to relieve his pain, trying to make his friend as comfortable and happy as possible.
- Morrie admits that he regrets his own pride and vanity. Mitch asks Morrie about his own experience.
- Morrie points at a bust sculpture that's been sitting on a bookshelf all along—it's a portrait of a young Morrie.
- Morrie explains that a good friend of his sculpted it. He and his wife moved away, and shortly afterward, Morrie's wife, Charlotte, had a pretty serious surgery. Norman, the friend, never came through with support and Morrie held a grudge ever since.
- Morrie says that his friend died before he could make peace; as he remembers this, he starts to cry.
- The lesson is that you have to be at peace with yourself because sometimes you can't fix things with other people. The best thing is not to be too late to forgive yourself.
- "Look at me" (23.31), Morrie says. We know that Mitch isn't one for eye contact.
- He tells Mitch that he doesn't know why he came back into his life right at the end, but he considers Mitch the third son that he never had.
- For a second Mitch feels scared that he'll betray his own dad… but then that feeling is replaced with fear that he's going to lose Morrie.
- Morrie says that he's picked a nice peaceful spot on a hill to be buried, and he makes Mitch promise to come visit him there on Tuesdays and tell him his problems. He says he'll do his best to listen.