The Meaning of Life from Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy wrote Confession in his late fifties. He had a mid-life existential crisis about the meaning of life that put him on the verge of suicide.

There are a few quotes that stuck with me:

Looking back on that time, I now see clearly that my faith … was a belief in perfecting myself.

I tried to perfect myself mentally — I studied everything I could, anything life threw my way

I tried to perfect my will, I drew up rules which I tried to follow

I perfected myself physically, cultivating my strength and agility by all sorts of exercises, and accustoming myself to endurance and patience

The beginning of it all was moral perfection but that was soon replaced by perfection in general: by the desire to better, not in my own eyes or those of God, but in the eyes of other people.

For Tolstoy, he wasn’t striving for perfection to please himself, he was striving for perfection to please others. It was vanity.

So what’s it really all for? Tolstoy puts it this way:

And indeed a bird is so made that it must fly, collect food, and build a nest, and when I see that a bird does this, I have pleasure in its joy. A goat, a hare, and a wolf are made that they must feed themselves, and must breed and feed their family, and when they do so I feel firmly assured that they are happy and that their life is a reasonable one. Then what should a man do? He too should produce his living as the animals do, but with this difference, that he will perish if he does it alone; he must obtain it not for himself, but for all.

I’m not religious, but I do love the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible. It expresses something similar:

Thus I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry: and that this should accompany him in his labor. Therefore eat thy bread with joy and drink thy wine with a merry heart…Live joyful with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life thy vanity…for this is thy portion in life and in they labors which thou takest under the sun. Whatsover thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might, for there is no work, no device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.

Tolstoy wasn’t particularly satisfied with the sentiment from Ecclesiastes, but it hits the nail on the head for me. Life and happiness consists of just 2 things: things that drive your sense of purpose (your toil) and the pleasures in life.