He was so interested in it all that he often did things himself, rearranging the furniture, or rehanging the curtains. Once when mounting a stepladder to show the upholsterer, who did not understand, how he wanted the hangings draped, he made a false step and slipped, but being a strong and agile man he clung on and only knocked his side against the knob of the window frame. The bruised place was painful but the pain soon passed, and he felt particularly bright and well just then. He wrote: 'I feel fifteen years younger'. He thought he would have everything ready by September, but it dragged on till mid-October. But the result was charming not only in his eyes but to everyone who saw it.
Leo Tolstoy, The death of Ivan Ilych
That was the moment that changed his whole life...
I was thinking of Ivan Ilych today. How easy for us to become imbued by the world around us and forget to look inside ourselves and even ask a couple of risky and life-threatening questions! I am very busy these days. And I am scared I will lose the capacity to stop and ask myself some of those important questions now and again. I don't want to be like Ivan, and wait until I am dying to remember who I am, or what I am.
I think I love this character, and also hate him. I love his humanity, his similarities with everyone else and with me. I love his need to find something else and his incapacity to find it. But I hate his apparent inability to realize all those things I've just said, his self-deception, his blindness. Are we all that blind?
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