Such is the premise behind Mitch Albom’s book Twice: A Novel. What If You Got to Do Everything in Your Life⎼Again? A story that awakens us to the power of love, time, and each moment of life. It’s a strangely compelling book.
It’s also a very American novel, even though a short but important portion takes place in Kenya. It starts with public school, sports teams, young love, the pressure to be accepted for who we are, to fit in. The main character, Alfred, or Alfie inherits from his mother the gift of being able to re-take a moment of life. All he has to do is whisper to himself “twice” and he’s back in the morning before. But it’s not the word itself that does it. It’s the reality of the wish, or intention. The gift allows him to fight bullies, win friends, and pass tests, academic or otherwise.
The night I started reading the book I wound up spending hours dreaming it. I inhabited the story. In the novel, Alfie’s mother dies when he’s young and he can’t save her. He must grow up living only with his father, who forever misses his wife. She was in my dreams that night. Alfie has a best friend named Wesley who dies young after joining the marines. Wesley was in my dreams.
So, there are limits to the power. It can’t change the time of someone’s death. And when Alfie falls in love, he only gets one chance at getting that person to love him back. And there are negatives; if we think we can re-do a moment of life, moments can seem less precious. We might not commit to them, and we live at more of a distance from ourselves and others. Alfie realizes we pay closer attention to life when it’s lived in the present tense.
When I was teaching high school, one of my classes was called Questions. It was a philosophy class, and students were asked to inquire into the deepest questions they were willing to share. The first question of the year always concerned death⎼ how to face it, how to help others facing it, what did different philosophies and religions say about it, “why” is there death, etc. One of the books we often read was the bestselling memoir of all time, Albom’s Tuesday’s With Morrie: An Old Man, A Young Man, and Life’s Greatest Lesson. Being a teen means living a search for authenticity; Morrie met the criteria.
When Albom was a young man in college, Morrie was his sociology professor. One night, years after graduating, years after not seeing his old professor, he watched Ted Koppel’s Nightline on tv. The guest was Morrie. The topic: Morrie was dying from ALS. After seeing this, Mitch decides to visit his old professor. They re-kindle their relationship, with Morrie once again as Mitch’s teacher, or coach. He gets a second chance to ask the biggest questions. They establish a new curriculum: of life, death, love and meaning⎼ and how to live with silence. Morrie had offered himself up for 14 Tuesdays as a living lesson in dying. His funeral was the final exam.
Alfie’s grandmother, Ya Ya, is in a nursing home for much of the novel. It’s a sad place. The residents can do little except wait for death. Alfie can’t say “twice” and stop her from aging.
We all age; if we get to live until we’re considered “senior” citizens, we get the opportunity to grow our sense of self.
We can create a practice, of observing the flow of a stream or of traffic or of whatever and whoever surrounds us, while being aware of our own responses to what we see and hear. We learn, as best we can, from whatever aging, constant change, and pain bring us.
Death is scary enough, but imagining living in a nursing home might be almost as bad. My Mom wound up in one when she was 85, due to a stroke. When I visited, she knew and responded to me. But she could barely say anything. The stroke stole that ability from her. She would always strongly take my hand and, in silence, softly stroke it. She never stopped loving me. I always wondered what she would say to me if she could.
Besides hating the nursing home for my mom, I also hated the thought that I might someday wind up in such a place. I live the question daily⎼ what, if anything, can I do so I’m less likely to wind up in an old folks’ home like Ya Ya’s, or my mom’s?
Being a human being means living and loving as best we can while knowing there’s an end to everything. We can take advantage of each moment we are given and ask the questions that live inside us. We can honestly study our patterns of thought and emotion, so our actions are honest and sincere enough we regret nothing. We can’t re-do a moment. But we can re-live it in our imagination until we learn how to be there so fully, we can let it go fully⎼ and we won’t need to think of it ever again.
When we are present enough, mindful enough, maybe every moment will be enough.
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This post is republished on Medium.com.
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Photo credit: iStock
