Yet here was Morrie talking with the wonder of our college years, as if I'd simply been on a long vacation.
..I once promised I would never work for money, that I would join the Peace Corps, that I would live in beautiful, inspirational places.

Yet here was Morrie talking with the wonder of our college years, as if I'd simply been on a long vacation.
..What happened to me? I once promised I would never work for money, that I would join the Peace Corps, that I would live in beautiful, inspirational places.

I had also developed my own culture. Work.
Over the years, I had taken labor as my companion and had moved everything else to the side.

One afternoon, I am complaining about the confusion of my age, what is expected of me versus what I want for myself.
"Have I told you about the tension of opposites?" he says.
"Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn't. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted.
A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. And most of us live somewhere in the middle.

What happened to me? I asked myself.
Morris's high, smoky voice took me back to my university years, when I thought rich people were evil, a shirt and tie were prison clothes, and life without freedom to get up and go - motorcycle beneath you, breeze in your face, down the streets of Paris, into the mountains of Tibet - was not a good life at all. What happened to me?

Morrie likes the nickname.
"Coach," he says. "All right, I'll be your coach. And you can be my player. You can play all the lovely parts of life that I'm too old for now.