Leo Tolstoy and the Meaning of Life

            The next is acknowledgement that life is evil, and that the best thing to do in life is to just enjoy it while you can. From Ecclesiastes: “Then 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 labour the days of his life, which God giveth him under the sun.” Tolstoy compares this type of acceptance to a man caught in a well hanging onto a branch between the jaws of a dragon and a terrible beast. The man notices some honey drops on some leaves within reach, and does his best to reach them in his last hours. By acknowledging the dragon and deciding to enjoy the honey as much as possible, people like Solomon found “happiness.”

            The last two options are the options, according to Tolstoy, of strength or of weakness. The strong end their lives, they understand that life is evil and seek to end it, and do. The weak stay depressed and are unable to kill themselves. Tolstoy puts himself into this category, this why he does not kill himself.

            There is yet another reason Tolstoy does not kill himself. The reason is reason. Tolstoy holds reason in extremely high regard, and recognizes that reason does not exist without life. Since he reasoned that life is evil, but reason comes from life, how could his reasoning be correct? Killing himself would destroy his reason, thus killing something good. This terrible contradiction plagued Tolstoy greatly. In the end, Tolstoy realized that he had to turn away from reason in order to truly live. This meant turning to God, and to faith.

            Tolstoy came to this conclusion after searching for the meaning of life with the simple folk. Among them, he did not find the contempt for life that he saw with the people of his class. These people had answers for life, and though they were not ground in reason, the people were happy, and they had God. They also had one critical thing that opened Tolstoy’s eyes- self sufficiency. To Tolstoy, providing for oneself became a critical aspect in the meaning of life. He observed the nobility, the parasites, and saw how they weren’t happy in relation to the simple folk who provided for themselves. He brings forth a great image of a man hired to pull a level up and down, and he is shown how the lever works to pump water. This man knows what he is doing has meaning, and is thus content. In the image, there are more men in the room looking at the pump watching it go up and down and don’t understand what it does. These men will come to the conclusion that they are useless and kill themselves. Tolstoy compares his class to these men in the room.

            In the end, Tolstoy found the meaning of life in God and faith. He reflected back on his previous views of life being evil, and discovered that the life he was living was evil, and therefore he had assumed all life is evil. God made life worth living for Tolstoy, and even though it took decades to find the answer Tolstoy was still able to live a happy life in the end.