Learning (a little) from Leo

Tolstoy, that is

Yesterday afternoon, I talked by phone with an old friend from college. One I see every now and then, but not for long stretches, so we usually have quite a bit to catch up on when we do talk.

He and his wife have two daughters, one of whom already is in college and the other a senior in high school, who’s slowly but surely waiting down the days until she can graduate and go off to college herself, next fall.

And they’re watching those days count down also, only from the opposite point of view. “It’s really hitting us hard,” he told me, “that in about seven or eight months, they’ll both be gone… and it’ll just be us here.”¹

I totally, totally get it, I told him. Even though our youngest isn’t quite a teenager yet — though, it feels closer every day — for some reason, not too long ago it hit me: he has years to go before he goes off to college, but these years, right now, are passing by pretty quickly.

So much of the energy of life in the house comes from their lives, it seems — everything that happens with school, the activities we ferry them to and from, their friendships (and of course, their crushes) — it all has a way of filling up your life, you know?

What that means, though, is I find that I don’t often take time to appreciate or even notice it. Life, at the moment, doesn’t offer up many long stretches of uninterrupted time that allows those thoughts to bubble up — except in rare, brief moments here and there.

Recently, I stumbled across some passages from the legendary Russian author Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace — I hope this doesn’t sound too pretentious, by the way! — in which his characters wrestle with who they are, what they’re doing, the direction they’re going in their lives.

In an early chapter in the book, a pair of characters named Andrei and Pierre share their frustrations; they question everything, wonder whether they’ve wasted their lives, and are despondent about what to do about it.

To Pierre, Andrei seems to have it all, so he can’t imagine why his friend would feel the same way he does:

“It seems odd,” said Pierre, “that you, you consider yourself a failure and your life ruined. You’ve got your whole life in front of you, everything. And you…”

He did not say what about you, but his tone showed how much he admired his friend, and how much he was expecting from him in the future.

That’s what being young is like, though, isn’t it? (I felt that way all the time when I was younger, anyway!) It’s so easy to drift onto that emotional plane, especially when nothing feels like it’s going right.

Much later in the book, we arrive at the home of a character named Nicholas right after Christmas Day; the house is filled with nearly two dozen friends and family, and the narrator describes it this way:

Never had love been so much in the air, and never had the amorous atmosphere made itself so strongly felt in the Rostovs' house as at this holiday time. "Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here," said the spirit of the place.

That idea, that sentiment — “seize the moments of happiness… love and be loved” — that’s what my friend and I both want to hold onto.

It’s just… it’s so hard to do, you know? You don’t recognize these moments when you’re in the middle of them — or at least I don’t, most of the time. Every once in a while, I can catch myself and stand outside myself, so to speak, and notice when I’m experiencing something I’ll remember forever. But not often.

That’s where Leo comes to our rescue again, in this excerpt from one of his essays:

“If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men² of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”

I know this is true. And you’ve likely heard something like it before, too. But what I wrestle with is that even though I know what to do, it can be so hard to actually do it — to step aside from the river of life, away from whatever is urgent or the obligations of the moment, and really, truly see.

So I keep going! And working on it. In the meantime, I hope you’ve had a great week so far — as always, keep in touch and let me know how your running/life is going.

Your friend,

— Terrell

1. I get how this sounds! Trust me, though — they have a great relationship, they’re just gonna miss their kids when they’re both grown up and out of the house.

2. Though Leo only uses “men” here, I would, of course, widen this boundary to mean men, women, non-binary, all of us.