recently read: tuesdays with morrie
my favorite quotes, seen librarby, and plans for future tours
Back in February, I dropped by Seen Library’s first pop up in Los Angeles. The pop up was at Shop RLT in West Hollywood - I was double happy because I got my hands on Lesse’s soothing lip balm after eyeing it online for a couple of months.
Seen Library is a community with efforts to divert from the feedings of the algorithm and connect with a good book. Jordan Risa, the creator of Seen Library (she holds many creative titles - you should check out how to be a woman on the internet), was super sweet and personable. I purchased two books from her, both preloved and hand wrapped in creamy paper accompanied by a library card that included themes, quotes, and clues to the premise of the book. It’s been really inspiring seeing her open this project to the public. One of the books I unwrapped was Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom. I took my time reading this - I’m historically known to read slowly; short attention span, ya know? - even though I was excited by this book. Every time I opened it and read a passage, I thought about my family - more specifically my grandparents. It made me feel warm, inspired, both challenged and determined to think about what I value in life. Although this is a shorter read, it took me about 2 months to get through, and those 2 months I spent enjoying this story were very very lovely.
I underlined a ton of quotes and paragraphs and there’s a few that I want to revisit with you. This idea of an “underlined tour” was heavily inspired by Jordan’s recently read series on her substack. My little spin on it is elaborating on my underlinings. Let’s get into it!
Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
This book is short, sweet, and heartwarming. Mitch Albom takes you through the lessons of life, inevitable loss, personal growth, and loving the journey. If you haven’t read it yet, I won’t spoil too much - I’ll let these quotes raise of lower your curiosity.
My underlinings:
“Make peace…with yourself and everyone around you.
Forgive yourself. Forgive others. Don’t wait.”
This is Morrie talking to Mitch in one of their lessons. I love this quote because acceptance and forgiveness is something I struggle with. There’s a lot of shit from my upbringing that I carry with me on a daily. I’ve dug into it a few times in solitude, but I need miss therapist (not putting her name out there lol) to help me work it out or I’m gonna have to swipe left.
One thing I’ve been actively trying to do in this era of palace minding is creating a space for my contradictions to exist. I heard someone talk about this idea in a TikTok once and it’s been in the back of my head since then. I think by allowing myself to see my worst self, I can accept my worst self and forgive myself for moments when I’ve been in that space. I hope this practice will lead me to the forgiveness of others. Life is short. I’m tryna hug my enemies and move on.
“I was amazed…at his ability to draw emotion from people who otherwise kept it locked away.”
This is Mitch talking about Morrie. I know some people like this - it’s such a special feeling when your walls just drop and you don’t even really know why. You just know you can be yourself, show yourself, be seen and feel heard. It’’s such light feeling. I hope everybody has a person in their life who unlocks the best parts of them.
“Devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning. You notice there’s nothing in there about salary.”
The last part of this quote struck me. After years of working, skill building, and establishing myself in creative social, I found myself wrapped up in the benefits of having more money. I’m not rich by any means, but I am making the most money I’ve ever made in my life (I work two full-time jobs, it’s almost a necessity for some living in Los Angeles unfortunately). I often feel myself craving time with my family, missing my sisters, wishing I had a few more hours to sit and chat with my besties. I am proud of how far I’ve come, the job titles that I hold, and the accomplishments I’ve made with the increase of my finances. But I am working on listening to my body. As a creative person, and as a human who simply needs human connection to sustain my happiness, I need to vacate sometimes, and that’s okay. I need to call home, or even hop on a flight and hug some of my family members - especially the ones that will inevitably go away in the few years to come. If I think about it too much it scares me. Maybe I should be thinking about it more often.
“Learn to detach. Don’t cling to things, because everything is impermanent.”
When I turned 25, I wads reminded of impermanence. There was a huge cast change in my life - and I’m not the type of person that needs a large group of people around me to feel good about myself, but I did feel the lack of a few people’s energies in the room.
Since reading this book, I’ve been trying to detach from my feelings, good or bad, when I feel them strongly. Even if I’m so so happy, I remind myself that I am not happy, I feel happy. And that will change. And that’s literally so normal and totally okay.
As I’m writing these little blurbs about why I underlined some of these things, I’m realizing what a challenge it is to describe why things resonate with me. Sometimes I can easily be like: yeah, I experienced xy and z and that’s why I like this line. But I recently watched an interview that Caroline Polachek did where she say’s something along the lines of: people are always trying to think logically about art and sometimes there’s nothing logical about it - it’s just a feeling.
Anyway, I’m really excited to find myself in a moment of confusion or crossroads, and return to this little piece of content to bring me back down.
“I give myself a good cry if I need it. But then I concentrate on all the good things still in my life. How useful it would be to put a daily limit on self-pity.”
I think this is just so cool. The idea that someone has so much self awareness and self control to be like: I feel sad, so I’m going to allow myself to cry. And once they cry, they say, great. I’m done. Let’s do this. And then they like live their day. Maybe more people operate like this than I’m aware of.
This is a level I want to access. If life was a video game, this is the level I’d want to play at until the game ends.
“Have you found someone to share your heart with? Are you giving to your community? Are you at peace with yourself? Are you trying to be as human as you can be?”
I love how challenging these questions are. They remind me of conversations with Bella. Super life focused, very direct and serious in the best way. This quote makes me a little happy, a little sappy, and very curious about my future. I like to believe that I will fumble my way into someones life and foster a really loving connection with them. But I really don’t know what miss moon and the universe are conspiring for me - all I know is that they are conspiring and that it’s gonna get good. I’m eager and excited for that. And I’m just so lucky to have some special people in my life to share my heart with until then. The boys and Rini, Gramoo and Stacey, my scorpios. I’m really grateful to know brilliant, beautiful, kind, loving people who share their thoughts and ideas with me, share spaces with me, their curations and creations with me. I love this little life of ours.
Thank you for reading my notebook - I appreciate your time! I’ve been toying with the idea of taking people on micro-tours as a form of expression and connection, but I haven’t narrowed down the best way to execute this yet. I think elaborating on the passages I love in a book through writing is the best medium for this tour. I’d love to take you on a future tour of my mug collection, maybe via a YouTube video or a TikTok (I’m still waiting on a mug to arrive from one of my favorite creators before I film this, so stay tuned for that!)
I’m still working out how I want this little space to take shape. If you want to troll, send me a DM. If you want to tell me that you like this, leave a yelp review. If you feel indifferent, let me know in the line for coffee at Maru.
Thanks again. xx