I recently finished reading War and Peace. Aside from a significant dose of satisfaction in the completion of a book with such a weighty page count, Tolstoy’s work has impressed several veins of thought in my mind.
One of these points is about what exactly life is made up of. Tolstoy claims, outright, that life consists of the mundane, ordinary, and seemingly unimportant. It is not primarily made of pinnacle moments. It’s not even the moments that you are expected to “take pictures for” as one of my friends put it. We take pictures at the summit of hikes, at graduations, at ceremonies, and at weddings. We erect statues at famous places for famous men who did famous things. Yet, life is not compressed and limited to one event and moment that supposedly encapsulates one’s character, purpose, and self. It is the composite, made of millions of moments, that carries weight and significance. Life, composed of infinitesimal bits, has a human sized purpose and meaning. Living is taking a hold of those close and everyday moments. Pierre, at the end of Tolstoy’s epic, is described as finally coming to understand this truth.
“Formerly he had been unable to see the great, the unfathomable and infinite, in anything. He had only sensed that it must be somewhere and had sought for it. In all that was close and comprehensible, he had seen only the limited, the petty, the humdrum, the meaningless. He had armed himself with a mental spyglass and gazed into the distance, where the petty and humdrum, disappearing into the distant mist, had seemed to him great and infinite, only because it was not clearly visible.”
As backwards as it may sound, one of the most significant and meaningful gifts that you can give to people is the time in your life that is seemingly the most mundane, insignificant, and repetitive. To share life together is the most incredible thing that we can do.
So, with a touch of irony, if you and I ever hang out and it’s really boring… its okay … we’re just sharing the truest stuff of life.
I remember you telling me about this a few weeks ago while all of us were doing homework…. I never would have thought of moments like that in the way you describe, but Matt, I totally agree! It makes me want to read Tolstoy :) But maybe I should finish the other million books I have started….or disregard them for the time being.
Mattio! I love this! One of my favorite things to do with friends is just hang out. To me, a good time is just being with a friend.
I agree 100%, the best gift you can give is time.
This is one of the reasons I love my wife so much. We can spend hours doing the small, mundane, “boring” (if I can use that word without any of its negative connotations) things of life and still grow closer together.
On a side-note, Matt, what you’ve written about here has far more of a “reformational” bent than a “revolutionary” one. Have you done much thinking about the differences between the two?
Great post, mate, keep it up. –”Pops”
You hit it right on the head. And honestly, unless you come to this conclusion, most thinking men would probably kill themselves in utter hopelessness. Especially once you get to working a full time job and doing “the grind” you have to put it into perspective or it will eat you alive.
Ben
@Pops:
Honestly, I haven’t thought much about the difference between reformational and revolutionary change. As far as I’m concerned, the means and type of a change is less important than the fact that change is occurring. Now, I’m coming again and again to the conclusion that the degree of those changes is in all actuality not going to be upon a societal and cultural context. It looks like a human sized purpose … but it is no less significant as such.