I can’t remember the last time I cried from reading a non-fiction book.
In this semi-autobiographic, relatively short book, Tolstoy tells us the story of the worst years of his life.
In his 50s, he finds his life filled with all the blessings we can hope for — he has a beautiful family, riches beyond imagination, a remarkable writing career, and he is physically and mentally fit. Yet, he finds himself in a black hole of depression. He faces a complete lack of meaning, hopelessness, and separation from reality.
The story tells about the sorrows of living in that state and his journey towards meaning and love.
This is a first-person story about how the famous Leo Tolstoy saved himself from suicide.
Synopsis
In the last couple of days, my time split into either reading or contemplating this book.
Tolstoy writes so that his gift of literature and great philosophical thought come together and creates a fusion of grace and wisdom.
Within the book, Tolstoy tries to answer the ultimate philosophical question: “If God does not exist, since death is inevitable, what is the meaning of life?.” Without the answer to this, for him, life had become “impossible.”
Tolstoy embarks on a journey to find an answer, a purpose for his life, and a reason to keep living.
He begins with the Eastern fable of the dragon in the well (representing death). A man is chased by a beast into a well, at the bottom of which is a dragon. The man is then clinging to a branch that is being gnawed by two mice (one black, one white, representing Yin and Yang, night and day, time). The man can lick honey from the branch above (representing the pleasures of life), but the man is doomed from the beginning.
He then goes on to describe the different attitudes toward this situation. The first is ignorance; if one is oblivious to the fact of death, life is bearable. The problem is that he is already aware of that truth, and he can’t return.
The second attitude is described as Epicureanism. Where one knows of the invertible, so he is using his time to enjoy the honey. Tolstoy doesn’t feel like he can do that, either.
The last two states are the most honest in their eyes. The first one is suicide; he describes the gifts of death as much better than those of life. Tolstoy says that he is “too cowardly” for that.
The last attitude he is taking is holding on to life despite its complete absurdity.
Tolstoy tries to search for an answer in knowledge desperately. He reads and devours science and philosophy books and searches for a logical explanation for meaning that he can live with.
He can’t accept faith blindly because it contradicts logic, and he can’t just use sense because that rejects faith. Death and life have blended to color his life.
Those failures led him towards religion, which brought meaning to billions of people in harsh situations and gave sense to billions alive before him. He realizes that God is in the way we live our lives, and we find meaning when aligning ourselves with him, using the Eastern idea of oneness to conclude that “God is life” and “God is Love”; this brings meaning back into his life.
He gets closer to the ordinary people, works at their jobs, enjoys their meals and their presence, and participates in the ceremonies of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Although his life is once again filled with meaning, he finds himself torn apart by his love of God, the hate, and the illogical actions of the church preachers, on the other.
This has caused him to leave the church and live with his personal view of faith, God as love, the infinite, and he is one but one part of God that should embrace the light and live to intensify it through doing good and showing compassion and love for all.
Personal Note – My Confession
I can’t forget how I felt when I finished reading the book; everything was clear suddenly as if a heavy burden had been lifted, and I could breathe in the most natural of ways.
This is how Tolstoy made me feel through black ink on a page, and once you think it, you can never go back; you have to keep searching for it, fighting for it; it will give you the courage to be more of yourself just because you already know what is out there.
Tolstoy is not asking us to turn ourselves into religion for our answers; he is asking us to look upwards, towards the infinite and magnificent, to act with courage, love, and trust in others; this will get us closer to God.
This is not a god in the religion “all know” figure that’s somewhere out there watching us. According to his faith, God is everything in its purest form — nature, animals, the stars, the ground and the sky, and even within us. God is both creation and death, health and illness, good and evil, and he can be found there; we must keep searching for him.
In the age where scientific facts and technologies have replaced thousands of years of religious traditions, a deep unmet need has opened, for there is no longer clear meaning in one’s life.
And so, we turn into cashing money, pleasure, and shallow entertainment to keep us together and busy; that leaves us with more depression, anxiety, and suicide than ever before. We are afraid to stop “hustling” because we don’t know what’s underneath it.
I don’t ask you to believe in God. I would consider myself somewhat of an atheist if I had to label it.
But I do believe in the feeling of infinite; that’s the feeling you get when you are closed and present with a loved one, when you love what you do so much that time is just flying by — those are moments we are connected with something more profound that’s lying beyond our rational thought, and striving to find it anywhere seems like a meaningful pursue to me.
How Can Tolstoy Help Us Improve Our Lives?
There are a few things I think we can learn and incorporate into our lives, and they live on two different levels.
The first one is more practical and can be summed up as living a simpler life than we are used to.
It’s about going slower and lighter in our daily life — intentionally showing love and compassion to everyone around us, focusing only on the activity at hand, acting with courage and love, and being mindful of the world.
Practices like meditation will help us connect to the infinite and make a simpler life in nature since we won’t start to fill a hole with ourselves.
It will affect so many areas of our lives that we can’t make those connections yet.
The second is more of a mindset shift. It’s about knowing the infinite and searching for it. Once we know it is there, we know there are no good or bad situations, for every situation is finite and will be consumed in the infinite since we are infinite; anything that happens to us, both good and bad, is simply happening for us.
Connect to that feeling, don’t think about what is happening at the moment but be there, experience it and see how it’s all pure.
Favorite Quotes
“Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.”
“I felt that what I had been standing on had collapsed and that I had nothing left under my feet. What I had lived on no longer existed, and there was nothing left.“
“I did not myself know what I wanted: I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped something of it.”
“For a man to be able to live, he must either not see the infinite, or have such an explanation of the meaning of life as will connect the finite with the infinite.”
“Faith is the strength of life. If a man lives, he believes in something. If he did not believe that one must live for something, he would not live. If he does not see and recognize the illusory nature of the finite, he believes in the finite; if he understands the illusory nature of the finite, he must believe in the infinite. Without faith, he cannot live.”