Finding meaning in the midst of depression
Leo Tolstoy thought that life was meaningless. This led him to the edge of suicide. But then he found meaning. How did he find meaning?
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Hey friends,
I want to share some great news with you! We welcomed our second child on November 23, 2024 at 12:49 am. Mom and baby are both well.
Please keep my family in your thoughts and prayers as we adjust to our new normal.
Onward to the lessons for this week!
Lessons from Leo Tolstoy
My deeds, whatever they may be, will be forgotten sooner or later, and I myself will be no more. Why, then, do anything? How can anyone fail to see this and live?
Rational knowledge led me to the conclusion that life is meaningless; my life came to a halt, and I wanted to do away with myself.
I still had not understood that in answering that one must live according to progress, I was talking just like a person being carried along in a boat by the waves and the wind; without really answering, such a person replies to the only important question—where are we to steer?—by saying, “We are being carried somewhere.”
The question that had brought me to the edge of suicide when I was fifty years old, was the simplest question lying in the soul of every human being, from a silly child to the wisest of the elders, the question without which life is impossible, such was the way I felt about the matter. The question is this: What will come of what I do today and tomorrow? What will come of my entire life?
I was inevitably led to recognize a different type of knowledge, an irrational type, which all of humanity had: faith, which provides us with the possibility of living.
It was obvious that the resolution of all the possible questions of life could not satisfy me because my question, no matter how simple it may seem at first glance, entails a demand to explain the finite by means of the infinite and the infinite by means of the finite.
I realized that if I wanted to understand life and its meaning, I would have to live not the life of a parasite but the genuine life; and once I have accepted the meaning that is given to life by the real humanity that makes up life, I would have to test it out.
Till next week,
Peace!
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