Tuesdays With Morrie

I enjoyed a quick read the other day, a book called The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom, which had been recommended by my sister. Though I don't believe in heaven or hell personally, the book was sorta touching and an easy read. So once I finished it, I picked up another book by Albom that I bought at a used book sale and planned to give to my sister. It's called Tuesdays With Morrie, also a quick read, and I have to say, this one is much better in my opinion (perhaps because so far it's not been tainted with idealistic and overly simplistic concepts of an afterlife). I've read about 2/3 of the book and came across this passage that I wanted to share with you all because I've come to feel this way as well and I think that writing it here will solidify the sentiment for me in some way that merely reading it cannot accomplish. It kind of ties in with my earlier post about Chris Jordan also.
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Morrie had always been taken with simple pleasures, singing, laughing, dancing. Now more than ever material things held little or no significance. When people die, you always hear the expression “You can't take it with you.” Morrie seemed to know that a long time ago.
“We've got a form of brainwashing going on in our country,” Morrie sighed. “Do you know how they brainwash people? They repeat something over and over. And that's what we do in this country. Owning things is good. More money is good. More property is good. More commercialism is good. More is good. More is good. We repeat it — and have it repeated to us — over and over until nobody bothers to even think otherwise. The average person is so flogged up by all this, he has no perspective on what's really important anymore.
“Wherever I went in my life, I met people wanting to gobble up something new. Gobble up a new car. Gobble up a new piece of property. Gobble up the latest toy. And then they wanted to tell you about it. 'Guess what I got? Guess what I got?'
“You know how I always interpreted that? These people were so hungry for love that they were accepting substitutes. They were embracing material things and expecting a sort of hug back. But it never works. You can't substitute material things for love or for gentleness for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship.
“Money 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.”
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P.S.
I finished the book last night. It brought a tear to my eye.