Professors lecture facts, while teachers help students learn lifelong lessons. Morrie Schwartz was both. His once "sparkling blue-green eyes, thinning silver hair that spills onto his forehead, big ears, an triangular nose, and tufts of graying eyebrows" became teary eyes, cluttered white hair, droopy cheeks, and loose skin that wrapped his immobile body due to a neurological dysfunction, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The disease caused Schwartz to gradually lose control of his muscles, starting at the legs, making its way up the body. As a man suffering immensely until the day of his death, Morrie had an inspiring and positive perspective upon many of life's elements including death, family, and culture.
             After being diagnosed with ALS, and told that he had only two more years left in his life, Schwartz decided to utilize his condition and help many illustrate the final days of his life, sketching the bridge between life and death. Schwartz knew that death was inevitable among all people. Making himself a research project, a human textbook, Schwartz believed that his narration would be of great value to those in the same situation. As Schwartz stated "Study me in my slow and patient demise. Watch what happens to me. Learn with me" (Albom p. 10)
             Knowing that the day would come, Schwartz faced the facts, and decided to live life the way he wanted, without feeling sorry for himself, but instead with courage and dignity. Schwartz goes on to say that "Everyone dies, but no one believes it. If we did, we would do things differently" (Albom p. 80). A person would do things differently because when one has to face death, his perception of the world is totally different. Take, for example, a healthy person and a paralyzed person awaiting death to strike upon him. A healthy person would be able to look outside the window, and actually go out and enjoy the outdoors; however, the par...