สวัสดีค่ะ อาจารย์ทุกท่าน
วันนี้งานสอนมากไหมคะ รู้สึกเหนื่อยใจ ท้อใจ บ้างไหมคะ อย่าคิดอย่างนั้นเลยนะคะ
คนที่เป็นครูคือคนที่เสียสละอย่างมากเพื่อลูกศิษย์ เป็นเรือจ้างที่คอยส่งลูกศิษย์คนแล้วคนเล่าขึ้นฝั่งไป และภูมิใจอยู่ข้างหลังอย่างเงียบ ๆ ดิฉันใคร่ขอเชิญชวนให้อาจารย์อ่านหนังสือเล่มเล็ก ๆ เล่มหนึ่ง ความยาวเพียง 192 หน้า ชื่อ Tuesday with Morrie ซึ่งเป็น international bestseller copyright 1997 ของสำนักพิมพ์ Doubleday เป็นเรื่องจริงของผู้เขียนคือ Mitch Albom ซึ่งเคยเป็นลูกศิษย์ของ Professor Morrie Schwartz แห่งมหาวิทยาลัย Brandeis เมือง Waltham รัฐ Massachusettes ทั้งคู่มีความผูกพันกันมากในยามเป็นครู – ศิษย์เมื่อเกือบยี่สิบปีที่แล้ว และต่อมาเมื่อ Prof. Morrie วัย 75 ป่วยเป็นโรค ALS หรือ Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis ซึ่งเป็นอาการ
ผิดปกติเกี่ยวกับระบบประสาทและรักษาไม่ได้คือรู้แน่ว่าต้องตายในไม่ช้า ทั้งคู่จึงคิดว่าจะใช้เวลาช่วงที่เหลืออยู่ทำวิทยานิพนธ์ฉบับสุดท้ายด้วยกันคือ ทุก ๆ วันอังคารทั้งคู่จะคุยกันในประเด็น
ต่าง ๆ ในรูปของบทเรียนชีวิต และ Mitch จะเก็บบันทึกไว้เพื่อพิมพ์เผยแพร่เป็นของขวัญให้กับโลกหลังจากที่ Professor สิ้นชีวิตไปแล้ว และนี่คือที่มาของหนังสือชื่อ Tuesdays with Morrie : An old man, a young man, and life’s greatest lesson. ในเล่มนี้ผู้อ่านจะเห็นได้ว่า
ผู้ที่มีวิญญาณครูที่แท้จริงเป็นเช่นไร และอิทธิพลของครูที่มีต่อลูกศิษย์นั้นใหญ่หลวงเพียงใด

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
Henry Adams

ต่อไปนี้จะได้คัดลอกคำพูดที่สำคัญของ Prof. Morrie ในโอกาสที่ Mitch ได้มาเยี่ยมไข้ในแต่ละวันอังคาร ตั้งแต่อังคารแรกที่เริ่ม “ชั้นเรียน” จนอังคารสุดท้ายก่อน Professor Morrie จะสิ้นลมไปอย่างสงบ

The First Tuesday : We Talk about the World
P52. The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in ….. Let it come in. We think we don’t deserve love, we think if we let it in we’ll become too soft. But a wise man named Levine said it right. He said, ‘Love is the only rational act.’

The Second Tuesday : We Talk about Feeling Sorry for Yourself
P57 I give myself a good cry if I need it. But then I concentrate on all the good things still in my life …. I don’t allow myself any more self-pity than that. A little each morning, a few tears, and that’s all ….
I thought about all the people I knew who spent many of their waking hours feeling sorry for themselves. How useful it would be to put a daily limit on self-pity. Just a few tearful minutes, then on with the day.

The Third Tuesday : We Talk about Regrets
P64 The culture doesn’t encourage you to think about such things [sad thoughts of all that one had missed; the secrets one had kept hidden] until you’re about to die. We’re so wrapped up with egotistical things, career, family, having enough money, meeting the mortgage, getting a new car, fixing the radiator when it breaks – we’re involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going. So we don’t get into the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying, Is this all? Is this all I want? Is something missing?

The Fourth Tuesday : We Talk about Death
P81 Everyone knows they’re going to die, but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently ….
But there’s a better approach. To know you’re going to die, and to be prepared for it at any time. That’s better. That way you can actually be more involved in your life while you’re living …
Do what the Buddhists do. Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, ‘Is today the day?’ Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be?

The Fifth Tuesday : We Talk about Family
P93 Family: Love each other or perish (Auden)
There is no experience like having children. There is no substitute for it. You cannot do it with a friend. You cannot do it with a lover. If you want the experience of having complete responsibility for another human being, and to learn how to love and bond in the deepest way, then you should have children.

The sixth Tuesday : We Talk about Emotions
P103 Don’t cling to things, because everything is impermanent … . But detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That’s how you are able to leave it … .
When you learn how to die, you learn how to live … .
I don’t want to leave the world in a state of fright. I want to know what’s happening, accept it, get to a peaceful place, and let go.

The Seventh Tuesday : We Talk about the Fear of Aging
P120 It is impossible for the old not to envy the young. But the issue is to accept who you are and revel in that …. You have to find what’s good and true and beautiful in your life as it is now. Looking back makes you competitive. And age is not a competitive issue … . The truth is, part of me is every age. I’m a three-year old, I’m a five-year-old, I’m a thirty-seven-year old, I’m a fifty-year-old. I’ve been through all of them, and I know what it’s like. I delight in being a child when it’s appropriate to be a child. I delight in being a wise old man when it’s appropriate to be a wise old man. Think of all I can be! I am every age, up to my own. How can I be envious of where you are – when I’ve been there myself?

The Eight Tuesday : We Talk about Money
P25 “People were so hungry for love that they were accepting substitutes. They were embracing material things and expecting a sort of hug back. But it never works. You can’t substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship. Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness.

The Ninth Tuesday : We Talk About How Love Goes On
P133 Love is how you stay alive, even after you are gone … . I believe in being fully present. That means you should be with the person you’re with … . Part of the problem is that everyone is in such a hurry. People haven’t found meaning in their lives, so they’re running all the time looking for it. They think the next car, the next house, the next job. Then they find those things are empty, too, and they keep running. Once you start running, it’s hard to slow yourself down.

The Tenth Tuesday : We Talk about Marriage
P149 There are a few rules I know to be true about love and marriage : If you don’t respect the other person, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. If you don’t know how to compromise, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. If you can’t talk openly about what goes on between you, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. And if you don’t have a common set of values in life, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble.
Love each other or perish.

The Eleventh Tuesday : We Talk about Our Culture
P154 People are only mean when they’re threatened and that’s what our culture does. And when you get threatened, you start looking out only for yourself. You start making money a god. It is all part of this culture … .
The problem is that we don’t believe we are as much alike as we are. Whites and blacks, Catholics and Protestants, men and women. If we saw each other as more alike, we might be very eager to join in one big human family in this world, and to care about that family the way we care about our own … . But believe me, when you are dying, you see it is true. We all have the same beginning – birth – and we all have the same end – death. So how different can we be?
P157 Invest in the human family. Invest in people. Build a little community of those you love and who love you.

The Twelfth Tuesday : We Talk about Forgiveness
P164 Forgive yourself before you die. Then forgive others. There is no point in keeping vengeance or stubbornness … .
PP166-167
It’s not just other people we need to forgive. We also need to forgive ourselves for all the things we didn’t do. All the things we should have done. You can’t get stuck on the regrets of what should have happened. I used to beat myself up over it.
Now I see that never did any good. Make peace. You need to make peace with yourself and everyone around you. Forgive yourself. Forgive others. Don’t wait … I mourn my dwindling time, but I cherish the chance it gives me to make things right.

The Thirteenth Tuesday : We Talk about the Perfect Day
P172 Death is as natural as life. It’s part of the deal we made … .
P174 As long as we can love each other, and remember the feeling of love we had, we can die without ever really going away. All the love you created is still there. All the memories are still there. You live on – in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here … Death ends a life, not a relationship … .
P178 There is no formula to relationships. They have to be negotiated in loving ways, with room for both parties, what they want and what they need, what they can do and what their life is like … . In business, people negotiate to win. They negotiate to get what they want. Love is different. Love is when you are as concerned about someone else’s situation as you are about your own.

The Fourteenth Tuesday: We Say Good-bye.