I used to be a classic workaholic, and after seeing how little work and career really mean when you reach the end of your life, I put a new emphasis on things I believe count more. These things include: family, friends, being part of a community, and appreciating the little joys of the average day.
Mitch Albom"You marked the minutes," the old man said. "But did you use them wisely? To be still? To cherish? To be grateful? To lift and be lifted?"
Mitch AlbomPeople 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.
Mitch AlbomThings that happen before you are born still affect you and people who come before your time affect you as well.
Mitch AlbomWhen he went blundering back to God, His songs half written, his work half done, Who knows what paths his bruised feet trod, What hills of peace or pain he won? I hope God smiled and took his hand, And said, "Poor truant, passionate fool! Life’s book is hard to understand: Why couldst thou not remain at school?" A poem by Charles Hanson Towne
Mitch AlbomLook, no matter where you live, the biggest defect we human beings have is our shortsightedness. We don’t see what we could be. We should be looking at our potential, stretching ourselves into everything we can become. But if you’re surrounded by people who say ‘I want mine now,’ you end up with a few people with everything and a military to keep the poor ones from rising up and stealing it.
Mitch AlbomMoney is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness. I can tell you, as I'm sitting here dying, when you most need it, neither money nor power will give you the feeling you're looking for, no matter how much of them you have."
Mitch AlbomFor as spiritual as some people think my books are, I've never really dealt with religious things.
Mitch AlbomIf you could pack for heaven, this was how you'd do it, touching everything, taking nothing.
Mitch AlbomIt’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 always wished I had done more with my work; I wished I had written more books. 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.
Mitch AlbomWhen I lacked even the self-respect to keep myself alive, she dabbed my cuts and I fell back into being a son; I fell as easily as you fall into your pillow at night. And I didn't want it to end. That's the best way I can explain it. I knew it was impossible. But I didn't want it to end.
Mitch AlbomWhat is it?” “A prayer.” “For a child?” She nodded. “For me?” Another nod. “On a tree?” “Trees spend all day looking up at God.
Mitch AlbomIn college, I had a course in Latin, and one day the word "divorce" came up. I always figured it came from some root that meant "divide." In truth, it comes from "divertere," which means "to divert." I believe that. All divorce does is divert you, taking you away from everything you thought you knew and everything you thought you wanted and steering you into all kinds of other stuff, like discussions about your mother's girdle and whether she should marry someone else.
Mitch AlbomThere are many things in my life that I wish I could take back. Many moments I would recast.
Mitch AlbomYou can be a mama's boy, be a daddy's boy, but you can't be both. So you cling to the one you think you might lose.
Mitch AlbomBeing here in Detroit, our public education in this city is - it's shocking. And the oversight of it and the oversight of the teachers and the funding is nonexistent, and the priority that's put on it is so low.
Mitch AlbomI hate to be like everyone else, but I'm rooting for San Antonio because I like teams that were built the old-fashioned way.
Mitch AlbomI asked myself, 'Am I going to withdraw from the world, like most people do, or am I going to live?' I decided I am going to live - or at least try to live - the way I want, with dignity, with courage, with humor, with composure.
Mitch AlbomEveryone keeps talking about fixing and returning America - making America great. But yet, nobody ever seems to focus on the fact that you're not going to make any country great if you don't address its children.
Mitch AlbomWhat she mostly wanted, he learned, was the same thing many people want--someone to notice she was there.
Mitch AlbomMuch of what we called "depression" was really dissatisfaction, a result of setting a bar impossibly high or expecting treasures we weren't willing to work for.
Mitch AlbomPeople don’t die because of loyalty.” They don’t?” She smiled. “Religion? Government? Are we not loyal to such things, sometimes to the death?” Eddie shrugged. Better,” she said, “to be loyal to one another.
Mitch AlbomThere is a big confusion in this country over what we want verses what we need...you need food. You want a chocolate sundae.
Mitch AlbomA wind blew, and the sand around his drawing scattered. He wrapped his fingers inside his wife's, and Father Time rekindled a connection he had only ever had with her. He surrendered to that sensation and felt the final drops of their lives touch one another, like water in a cave, top meets bottom, Heaven meets Earth. As their eyes closed, a different set of eyes opened, and they rose from the ground as a shared south, up and up, a sun and a moon in a single sky.
Mitch AlbomDeath doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed.
Mitch AlbomIf you hold back on the emotions--if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them--you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid.
Mitch AlbomI always look for a "rhythm" in my writing. A cadence to the sentences. Sometimes I think of pieces I write in a song writing infrastructure - i.e., a verse, a chorus that I return to, a bridge that's something differenct, a chorus that I return to.
Mitch AlbomI 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.
Mitch Albommy thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways" from the book of Isaiah
Mitch AlbomStatus will get you nowhere. Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone.
Mitch Albom