Lim Swee Heong on Reading Mitch Albom's Tuesdays with Morrie for Gratitude, Priorities and Connection

Some motivational books push us to do more. Others ask a quieter question: are we spending our time on what actually matters? In this piece, I, Lim Swee Heong, who also writes online as bullbearnme Swee, look at Mitch Albom's Tuesdays with Morrie, a short memoir that has stayed popular for decades because it turns big questions about work, relationships and time into conversations anyone can follow.

What the book is

Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson is a memoir by the American writer Mitch Albom, first published by Doubleday in August 1997. At the time, Albom was best known as a sports columnist for the Detroit Free Press. The book went on to become a number-one New York Times bestseller and, according to the author's own website, has been published in 45 languages. It was later adapted into an Emmy-winning television film starring Jack Lemmon and Hank Azaria, and into a stage play.

The book is about Morrie Schwartz, a sociology professor at Brandeis University whom Albom had studied under in the 1970s and then lost touch with after graduating. In 1995, Albom saw Schwartz interviewed by Ted Koppel on the ABC programme Nightline about living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, a progressive and terminal illness. Moved by the interview, Albom contacted his old teacher and began visiting him at his home in Massachusetts, usually on Tuesdays. Their conversations became the material for the book. Schwartz died in November 1995. Albom has said he wrote the book chiefly to help pay his former professor's medical bills, and that publishers initially turned the proposal down before Doubleday agreed to publish it with a modest first printing.

Reading a memoir of conversations

It helps to be clear about what kind of book this is. Tuesdays with Morrie is not a biography of Schwartz, a medical account of ALS or a self-help manual with steps to follow. It is Albom's personal account of a series of conversations, shaped and written up by him after the fact, interwoven with memories of his student years and reflections on his own busy career.

That means the book carries two voices at once. One is Schwartz's outlook on living and dying, as Albom recorded and remembered it. The other is Albom's response as someone who, by his own description, had let ambition crowd out other parts of life. Readers do not need to accept every idea in the book as universal advice. It works best when treated as an invitation to think, with the reader deciding which ideas fit their own circumstances.

The lesson of the reconnection

Before any of the famous conversations, the book begins with something ordinary: a former student realising he had not called a teacher who once meant a lot to him. That small moment is one of the most practical parts of the story.

Most of us have people we intend to contact and never quite do. A mentor who helped us early on, a friend from school, a relative we only see at festive gatherings. Life gets busy, and the gap grows until reaching out feels awkward. The book suggests, gently, that the awkwardness is usually smaller than we fear, and the regret of never trying is usually larger. One useful habit after reading it is to pick a single person and send a simple message this week, without waiting for a special reason.

Priorities and the pull of busyness

A recurring theme in the book is the difference between being busy and being fulfilled. Albom describes a life full of deadlines, travel and professional achievement, and contrasts it with Schwartz's insistence on giving full attention to the people in front of him, even as his illness limited what he could physically do.

The motivating idea here is not that work is bad or ambition is wrong. It is that a full calendar can quietly replace things we would choose if we stopped to think. A helpful exercise is to look back over an ordinary week and ask how much time went to the things you would list as most important, such as family, health, friendships or learning, compared with time that simply filled the gaps. The answer does not have to lead to dramatic change. Even a small adjustment, like protecting one evening a week for people rather than tasks, can shift how a week feels.

Gratitude without denial

Much of the book's warmth comes from Schwartz's appreciation for simple things: conversation, food, music, nature seen through a window, the company of visitors. What makes this more than sentimentality is that the book does not pretend his situation was easy. It describes his physical decline honestly, and it shows that gratitude and grief can sit side by side.

That balance is worth holding onto. Motivational writing sometimes suggests that a positive attitude means ignoring difficulty. Tuesdays with Morrie offers a more grounded picture: acknowledging what is hard, allowing yourself to feel it, and still noticing what is good. For readers going through a stressful period, this can be more helpful than advice to simply cheer up. A small practice inspired by the book is to end the day by naming one real difficulty and one real thing you are thankful for, without forcing either to cancel the other out.

Learning from the people around us

Another quiet strength of the book is its picture of teaching as something that continues outside a classroom. Schwartz's lessons come through conversation, questions and example rather than lectures. Albom, for his part, has to learn to listen rather than steer every exchange toward efficiency.

This is a useful reminder for anyone who wants to keep growing. Much of what we learn about patience, kindness and perspective comes from the people around us, especially those who are older or have lived through things we have not. Asking an elder relative about their working life, their early years or how they handled a difficult season can be one of the most rewarding conversations available to us, and it costs nothing but time and attention.

Approaching the subject of mortality

Because the book is built around a man facing a terminal illness, it inevitably deals with death. This is not a spoiler in any meaningful sense, since the premise is clear from the start, but readers who are grieving or caring for someone who is ill may want to approach it at their own pace. Some will find it comforting, and others may find parts of it heavy.

The book's broader point is that thinking honestly about the limits of our time can clarify what we value. That idea appears in many traditions and philosophies, and the memoir simply presents it through one relationship. Readers can take from it a sense of urgency about kindness and connection without needing to dwell on anything morbid.

A balanced way to read it

Tuesdays with Morrie has many devoted readers, and it also has critics who find its tone too gentle or its lessons too simple. Both reactions are reasonable. The book is short, deliberately plain and focused on feeling rather than argument. If you prefer detailed evidence and analysis, you may want to pair it with a more rigorous book about ageing, caregiving or wellbeing. If you want something that slows you down and prompts reflection, its simplicity is part of its appeal.

A few reflection questions may help while reading or afterwards:

Who is one person I have lost touch with and would like to contact again?
How closely does an ordinary week match what I say matters most to me?
Where am I busy without being fulfilled, and what small change could help?
Can I acknowledge something difficult in my life while still noticing what is good?
Whose experience could I learn from if I simply asked and listened?

Why it is worth reading

Tuesdays with Morrie remains a gentle, accessible book that many readers finish in a few sittings and remember for much longer. Its value lies less in any single idea than in the way it encourages us to pause and look at our priorities, our relationships and the ordinary pleasures we often overlook. For anyone feeling stretched thin by busy routines, it offers a calm and sincere reminder that time spent with people, attention given freely and gratitude practised honestly are among the most worthwhile investments we can make.

If you enjoy reading reflections like this, you can find more of my writing on Medium at https://medium.com/@bullbearnmeswee

A statement from Lim Swee Heong

I'm Lim Swee Heong, a cloud database architect in Singapore who enjoys cycling, sightseeing, travel, reading and gaming on Nintendo Switch and PS5. I also go by bullbearnme Swee online.

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