Ivan Ilyich: what a life is worth living

Literature, this time with Ivan Ilyich, teaches us once again that life is worth living. The experience of the last epidemic that has struck the whole world and that still continues to plague us has allowed us to think about many things: many that we thought were important and necessary, and were not, and others that seemed to us that could always wait and that, after this experience, are now indispensable.

Table of contents

• Planning for the unexpected
• Is it worth living the way we have been living?
• Stand with the literature and see what is worthwhile
• Dreams that are worth more do not end in nothing
• Forgiveness as a source of peace

I don’t know if you have already read The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy? It is an experience close to that of Covid-19!

Ivan is an ordinary man, one of those we meet in the street or who accompany us silently in the subway, very similar to one of us. He always dreamed of a better life, of having a good family, a good wife, and children – a boy and a girl – pleasant and calm, of a good job, a good house and, as he himself says in Tolstoy’s work, of having the conditions to live a decent and secure life.

Wouldn’t that be the dream of many of us or of our acquaintances? Isn’t it the dream of a reasonable job, nothing out of this world, something minimally secure that offers us security and peace of mind and the fewest worries and a certain margin of well-being, without having to do anything excessively complicated and, much less, on the borderline between the ethical and the corrupt?

Isn’t it the dream of something that would give us (and Ivan) a comfortable social position and allow us to spend the rest of our lives in a pleasant, honest, and decent way. Yes, this, according to Ivan’s dreams, would allow us to enjoy a sure happiness more than anything.

Planning for the unexpected

And suddenly, when it seemed that most of those dreams were coming true, a sudden and small pain in one of his kidneys left him prostrate and without strength. Something sudden, without warning and that from then on opened the way of bitterness for him: fear and pain; pain and fear. Anguish, anguish and despair. When is this going to end? Will there be a remedy? Will we get out of this or not?

Ivan, at first, did not think it would be very serious. He thought it was just a passing pain that would soon go away. But, as time went by, he began to realize that everything was going from bad to worse. And he despaired because it seemed to him that the doctors could not agree and, worse still, it seemed that they were all as lost as he. Some said yes, that it was something very serious; others said it was not so grave. Some prescribed some remedies, and others, others, and each head had a verdict. But the worst thing was that he was the sick one and he was the one who suffered. And each time he was more and more sure that nobody knew anything about anything and all the while he languished little by little.

Is it worth living the way we have been living?

And it is then that we stop and think: What is wrong? What is wrong with me? Why is it that there is no way to understand each other? Why all this, this eagerness, this anxiety? Is it worth living the way I have lived up to now? What is really necessary and what is superfluous in my life?

With increasing despair, Ivan realizes that his life is slipping from his hands, that his dreams, his ambitions, his desires, his projects…. everything that until recently pushed him forward, is now being interrupted. And not only his dreams. Wife, children, friends, colleagues, house, social position… everything went bankrupt and collapsed as if suddenly, out of nowhere, a huge hole opened up, a huge hole that swallowed everything. Everything that was more human and better: the meaning of life, the desire to fight, the desire to dream.

Stand with the literature and see what is worthwhile

And, again, once again (that’s one of the best things literature does for us) we stop and think: Was it worth it? What has been spent with me? In these last what…ten, twenty years? Perhaps more, perhaps in these last fifty, sixty years?

Not so long ago, it seemed as if, finally, we were one or two steps away from Paradise, as if we had the whole world in our hands, as if, now, once and for all, we could fix the world as it should be. Build the new world, the perfect one.

It was a matter of time, of a short and little time, almost an instant, considering the many years and centuries we have always had to live and endure with so much imperfection and so many mistakes and disappointments. We had everything in our hands so that we could all be and have and do everything we wanted, everything we had always dreamed of and had not been able to…. but now, yes.

And suddenly the dream was interrupted, as with Ivan Ilyich.

Dreams that are worth more do not end in nothing

I look around me and I see many people whose dreams have been interrupted. People who believed that there was a right to be happy, people who have strived to reach far beyond, always far beyond, and now…. Now I see people whose dreams have been shattered. Just like that, no more, no less. The epidemic, the unexpected, the unforeseen has taken everything – dreams, affection, bonds, lives – as if it were an overwhelming avalanche.

And it hurts. We want more than anything to find a culprit. Someone to put the sanbenito on, because for this, all this that happens and has happened to us, someone has to pay and to answer for what was taken from us, for what we have lost, for what could have been and, probably, will be no more.

And, then, once again, again, we stop and think: What about Ivan? What did Ivan Ilyich do? What did Tolstoy think for Ivan?

Ivan, if that reassures us or gives us any consolation, also rebelled.

He was also looking for a culprit, at least one. And he also became increasingly sad and bitter and exhausted, because none of this is fair, nor can it be fair, nor can it make the slightest sense, and yet, as Viktor Frankl said, the human being is someone who is always in search of meaning.

I myself, who am writing this text here, am also looking for meaning in all this. And I really hope that whoever is reading me also wants to find it.

Forgiveness as a source of peace

It seems to me that what Tolstoy made Ivan understand was that what, in those moments, really matters is nothing abstract, nor generic, nor so great and universal that we do not have the minimum condition to embrace it in an embrace.

What really made sense to Ivan and brought him the peace he was eagerly seeking was the warm and loving gesture of his youngest son and the old servant. It was through feeling that wave of human warmth that Ivan remembered the need to ask for forgiveness. And when he did ask for it, although a little awkwardly, because he no longer even remembered how to do such a thing, nor how to beg pardon, then, yes, he was able to sleep happily and peacefully. He saw the light that came to call him.

And, then, we stop and think: my life, this life I’ve been living… is it worth it?

Rafael Ruiz