Hook, directed by Steven Spielberg
“Do you go by Mitch or Mitchell?”
“My friends call me Mitch.”
“Then I’ll call you Mitch. Because I hope by the end of this semester that you will consider me your friend.”
As a freshman at Brandeis University, Mitch Albom was so inspired by Professor Morrie Schwartz that he registered for a class with him every semester. The professor even asked that Mitch call him “Coach.”
Upon graduating, the student gave his professor a leather briefcase as a token of his appreciation. Schwartz gave Mitch a hug, and then a final assignment: “Promise me you’ll stay in touch.”
Mitch made the promise. And then broke it every day for almost two decades.
After graduation Mitch Albom became an award-winning journalist, an ESPN broadcaster, a daily radio show host, and a prolific writer. One Friday night, Mitch sat on his couch, flipped on the television, and stumbled upon an episode of Nightline. Ted Koppel was sharing the story of how a seemingly ordinary professor with the terrible diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis could remain so positive, so generous, so alive.
Mitch was overcome with emotion when Koppel shared the name of the professor: Morrie Schwartz.
The following morning he tracked down his old friend’s phone number and called. When Morrie answered, Mitch awkwardly said, “I don’t know if you’ll remember me. My name is Mitch Albom.”
Dying with ALS, but still exuding life, Morrie responded lovingly, “Why didn’t you call me Coach?”
The following Tuesday Mitch flew from where he lived in Michigan to visit with his favorite teacher at his home in Newton, Massachusetts. After a long visit recounting the lives both had led in the eighteen years since their last visit, Mitch asked if he could come back and visit Morrie next week.
He kept the promise this time.
Mitch continued his visits every Tuesday for the next several weeks. His beloved professor was just as inspiring, if not more so, as he lived the final days of his life. Realizing that his expenses were mounting, and that the lessons he was receiving during each visit from his dying friend might teach others how to live more fully, Mitch asked if he could write a book about their conversations.
Morrie couldn’t imagine people being interested in his life and death, but agreed to it.
Even with Mitch Albom’s media connections and significant platform, every publisher turned down the seemingly dark, tragic story of an old teacher dying of ALS. Finally a single publisher, Doubleday, agreed to make the gamble, printing twenty thousand copies.
During my visit with Mitch, I was shocked to learn how difficult it was for him to get published. Because, in the twenty years since its publication, Tuesdays with Morrie has been translated into forty-five languages and has sold more than 14 million copies.
In one of their final visits, Mitch, observing how generous his teacher was with everyone who came into his room, struggled to understand how he could be so giving.
“Coach, why are you so kind, so patient, so present with everyone? How do you keep giving to all of us, even though you are the one dying?”
Morrie looked over to him and responded, “Taking makes me feel like I am dying.” There was a long pause. The simple act of breathing now required significant effort on Morrie’s part. He then added, “But giving…giving makes me feel like I am living.”
It was one of the final lessons from his coach, and it dramatically altered the arc of Mitch Albom’s life.
After the immense, surprise success of Tuesdays with Morrie, and remembering Morrie’s advice that “living was giving,” Mitch Albom today actively supports more than a dozen charities and runs an orphanage in Haiti.
Although Mitch and his wife, Janine, never had children of their own, they came to view the almost four dozen orphans at Have Faith Haiti Orphanage as a blessed opportunity to expand their family—and to shower the kids there with love and affection.
But they never expected that one of those children would profoundly change their lives.
That child was Chika.
She was born three days before the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that devastated her country, killing 300,000 people and leaving 1.5 million people without shelter. She and her mother found themselves homeless. A year later, her mother died in childbirth and Chika went to live with an aunt. At age three she was brought to the orphanage and into Mitch and Janine’s care.
Chika had bright, vibrant eyes, a permanent smile, and an easy laugh. Her joy for life was infectious. When Chika turned five, however, she began to exhibit troubling symptoms, and she was taken to the hospital in Haiti for an MRI. Whatever illness she had was beyond the scope of what they could diagnose and treat, and the doctors asked if there was any way she could be treated in the United States.
Mitch and his wife arranged for Chika to come to Michigan, and soon learned her diagnosis: an inoperable, irreversible brain tumor called diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG). DIPG is a cancer of the brain stem that is aggressive and debilitating. It affects just a few hundred kids each year. There is no curative treatment.
The Alboms didn’t want to send Chika back to Haiti to die. So they decided to try to give her a chance at life. They brought her home to live with them while she underwent six weeks of radiation.
They had no idea that their lives would be forever altered by the presence and love of this little girl.1
Having spent her entire life in Haiti, Chika considered everyday things here as absolutely miraculous. Hot water coming out of a faucet. An elevator ride. Even in the midst of her hospital treatments, Chika found moments of pure joy.
As time went on, the little girl who danced through life lost her ability to walk. Mitch began to carry her.
When Mitch developed a hernia, his doctor asked him, “Are you doing a lot of lifting?”
Mitch laughed. “Yes.” He was instructed to stop, but he refused. There was nothing as rewarding in his life as being able to carry this little girl.
One day he and Chika were coloring. He looked at his watch and realized he was running late for work. Mitch hurriedly stood, raced to grab his items for work, and bent to give Chika a kiss goodbye. The little girl looked up, surprised.
“Where are you going?” the now seven-year-old demanded.
“I have to work.”
“I don’t want you to go.”
“Well, it’s my job.”
“No, it isn’t. Your job is carrying me.”
Mitch stared down at Chika, who had brought so much into his life. He thought about what she’d said, and what was truly important. He put down his briefcase, sat next to her, and began to color.
Mitch describes himself as having been a bit unbalanced before he reconnected with Morrie. He was goal-oriented and ambitious. “Time was a commodity to be given away in exchange for advancement.”2
But Morrie awoke in him the real point of living. And now Chika gave him another crash course in what was truly important.
Mitch and Janine immersed themselves in their real job for the final weeks of Chika’s life, tenderly cuddling her, rocking her, feeding her, and loving her. When she could no longer speak, they would lie next to her and tell her stories or play dolls with her.
Eventually the brave little girl took her last breath this side of eternity.
And at her side were Mitch and Janine, weeping, brokenhearted.
But not angry.
“How can we be angry?” Mitch told me. “We did not lose a child. We were given one.”
Chika lived well beyond the twelve months she was expected to. For twenty-three months, she transformed the Alboms’ lives. She gave them a purpose, a sense of joy, and the opportunity to love someone in a way that they’d never experienced before.
Throughout those twenty-three months, they knew what their job was: to love that little girl and give her a shot at life.
It was a job that they embraced with open arms. A job they were immersed in for those months she graced them with her presence. A job that changed their lives forever.
Mitch acknowledges the deadlines he missed, the opportunities he lost, and the money he did not make during those many months. But he wouldn’t change a thing about how he spent that time with Chika.
He was living out Morrie Schwartz’s edict. For that period of time, he devoted his life to that little girl, and he had never felt more alive.
Sometimes we get confused about what our job truly is.
Is our primary job at the workplace we clock in to every morning? Is our most important duty to make money, balance spreadsheets, and hit sales targets?
Or is our job to love our family and friends? To give to our communities? To fully show up, totally engage, and spread joy and love in each portion of our days, whether we are working, playing, resting, or just being?
What is your job in life? Are you giving it the care and attention it deserves?
I hope that you never have to face the dire diagnosis of a loved one in order to realize how much you are missing, and recognize that it is time to wake up to the phenomenal gift of immersing yourself totally in every moment, in every interaction, every day.
To live, in other words, like Chika.