Chapter 22 Eleventh Tuesday - Talking about our culture

"Slap harder." I pat Morrie on the back. "Try harder." I slapped down again. "Closer to the shoulders...a bit down." Morrie lay on his side in his pajama pants, his head sunk in the pillow, his mouth open.The physical therapist was teaching me how to slap the poison out of his lungs -- Morrie needs to do this regularly now, or his lungs will harden and he won't be able to breathe. "I...knew...you wanted to...hit me..." Morrie gasped. That's right, I joked he said as I pounded my fist on his white back.Who told you to give me a B in my sophomore year of college!Come again heavy!

We all laughed, nervously at the approach of the devil, which might have been funny if no one had known that this was Morrie's dying gymnastics.Murray's illness is now dangerously close to his last line of defense -- his lungs.He had foreseen that he would eventually suffocate, which I could not have imagined.Sometimes he would close his eyes and draw a hard breath into his mouth and nostrils, as if preparing to lift an anchor. It's just October, and the weather outside is starting to cool down, and the fallen leaves cover the greenery around West Newton.Murray's physical therapist showed up earlier than usual.Usually, when the nurses and specialists were busy around him, I always made excuses to avoid it.But over the weeks, as our time shortened, I became less sensitive to the woes of the human body.I want to stay there.I want to see everything that happens.This is not my usual personality.But what happened in the Morrie family in the last few months was also extraordinary.

So I watched the physical therapist work on Morrie lying on the bed. She tapped on the ribs in Morrie's back and asked him if he felt any relief from the depression in his chest.When she stopped to rest, she asked me if I wanted to try it.I said yes.A smile crept across Morrie's face buried in the pillow. "Don't be too hard," he said, "I'm an old man." Under her guidance, I pounded his back and sides back and forth.I don't want to think about Morrie lying in bed (his latest adage "When you're in bed, you're dead" echoes in my ears again), and Morrie, curled up on his side, looks so Thin, so haggard, almost as big as a child.I saw his fair skin, scattered white hairs, and his limp and drooping arms.I remembered how we used to be obsessed with fitness: lifting barbells, doing sit-ups; only to eventually nature wrestle our muscles back.My fingers touched Morrie's slack muscles, and I patted him as directed by the physical therapist.And actually, when I'm punching his back, what I really want to punch is the wall.

"Mitch?" Morrie gasped, his voice vibrating like a jackhammer under my pounding. Ok? "When did I... give you... B?" Morrie believed that human beings are inherently good.But he also saw the variability of things. "Man is only bad when he is threatened," he said to me that day, "and that threat comes from our civilized society, from our economic system. Even a man who has a job is threatened because he will Worrying about losing it. When you’re threatened, you’re only looking out for yourself, you’re looking at money as God. It’s just part of our culture.”

He exhales. "That's why I can't take it." I nodded and squeezed his hand.We shake hands a lot now, which is another change that happened to me.What used to make me embarrassed and squeamish is now routine, connected to him by a tube, and a catheter bag filled with yellow urine sits at my feet.It made me nauseous a few months ago, and now I don't care at all.Morrie, "The smell left in the room after the toilet didn't bother me either. He couldn't change the room he lived in, and he couldn't close the toilet door and spray air freshener in the room. This is his bed, this is his Chair, this is his life. If my life is also enclosed in such a small place, I don't think I will smell much better.

"That's what I'm saying you should create a little culture of your own," Morrie said. "I'm not telling you to ignore every single norm of society. For example, I don't hang around naked; I don't Not going to run a red light. I can play by the law on small things like this. But on big issues -- how to think, how to judge -- you have to choose. You can't make any one person -- or any society -- to make the decision for you. "Just me. I seem to be ashamed of a lot of things - not being able to walk, not being able to scrub my bum, sometimes waking up in the morning crying - when there's no natural reason to be ashamed of any of these things.

"The same goes for women trying to be thin and men trying to be rich. That's what our culture wants you to believe. Don't believe it." I asked Murray why he didn't emigrate to another country when he was young. "where to?" I have no idea.South America.New Guinea.A place that is not as self-inflated as the United States. "Every society has its own problems," Morrie said, raising his eyebrows, the closest he could get to a shrug. "I don't think running away is the answer. You should work on building your own culture. "No matter where you live, the greatest weakness of human beings is lack of foresight. We can't see our future. In fact, we should see our potential and let ourselves adapt to various developments and changes as much as possible. But if your surroundings try to Those who are greedy for profit, then the end result is that a small number of people get rich, and the task of the army is to prevent the poor from rebelling and robbing them of their wealth."

Morrie looked over my shoulder to the far window.There was the occasional rumble of trucks and the howling of the wind oncoming.He stared at the neighbor's house for a moment, then continued, "The thing is, Mitch, we don't believe we're all the same. White and black. Catholic and Protestant. Men and women. If we didn't feel different from each other, we'd be happy to join the human family, and Take care of that big family like you take care of your own little family. "Believe me, when you're dying you realize it's right. We all have the same beginning - birth - and we have the same end - death. So how can we be so different ?

"Get involved in the human family. Get involved in the world of human emotions. Create a small society of people you love and people who love you." He shook my hand gently, and I shook his hard.Just like in the Kanival game, when you hammer down the hammer and watch the ball rise to the hole above, I seem to see my body heat passing from Morrie's hand to his chest, and from there to his chest. The chest rose to his cheeks and eyes.he laughed. ①A game played in an amusement park. "At the beginning of life, when we were babies, we needed others alive, right? At the end of life, when you are like me now, you need others alive, too, don't you?"

He lowered his voice. "But there's a secret: halfway through life, we need other people to live, too." Later that afternoon, Connie and I went to the bedroom to watch the court ruling on O.J. Simpson.The scene suddenly became tense as both the plaintiff and defendant faced the jury.Simpson, wearing a blue suit, was surrounded by a group of lawyers.A few feet away from him are the prosecutors who want him to go to jail.The jury foreman read the verdict -- "not guilty" -- and Connie screamed. "Oh, my god!" We watched as Simpson hugged his lawyer and listened to the commentators as hordes of black people celebrated in the streets outside the courtroom while white people sat dumbfounded in restaurants.The verdict has been called historic, despite the daily murders.Connie went to the living room.She's tired of watching it.

I heard the door of Morrie's study close.I stare at the TV.Everyone in the world is watching, I said to myself.Just then, however, I heard someone drag Morrie from his chair.I laughed: my old professor was sitting on the toilet bowl just as "Trial of the Century" came to a dramatic close. In 1979, there was a basketball game in the Brandeis gym.Our team was playing well, and there was a shout from the bench: "We're first! We're first!" Morrie, who was sitting next to him, was confused by the shout.Finally, he stood up in the midst of shouts of "We are number one" and shouted, "So what about number two?" The students looked at him and stopped shouting.He sat down and smiled smugly.