So they lived. Everything went along without change and everything was fine.

“What if my entire life, my entire conscious life, simply was not the real thing?”

“But what is the real thing?”

—Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich

I continue to re-explore some of the books that delivered crucial truths to me at a pivotal time in my life. The Death of Ivan Ilyich was the second book assigned in my Western Classics II class during the fall semester of 2002. Whenever I think of this story, the words that come to my mind first are “inauthentic life.” I read this story and cried for the Ivan in all of us, but mostly for the Ivan in me. I did not want to continue living my own inauthentic life. Mine was very different from Ivan’s, but still not real even though it may have appeared to be fine to those who shared my world at that time. The hope this story holds was a needed light.

Ivan chose the right career, married the right spouse, bought the right house, filled the house with the right things, had the right children, went through all the right motions of life. Only on his death bed did he realize these were not the real things of life. For too long, I had been going through the motions of the life that I felt was expected of me. I suppose I expected it of myself just as much as anyone else did. We all want to be happy, and when we are young we have a picture in our mind of how a happy life should look. We can put the external pieces in place yet know some of the pieces don’t really quite fit. We go on with each day anyway, hoping not only that nobody else notices but that we will not notice. Sometimes, it was impossible to not see clearly that the pieces of my life did not only not fit but were probably not the right pieces at all.

My copy of Ivan Ilyich is well-marked and annotated. The quotes I chose above are only those that seemed to gather together the messages I grappled with as I read this the first time and as I ponder it now. When I closed the last page for the first time, I cried —really cried— for close to an hour. Beginning to learn truths can do that to us. The hope and light held even in the dark story remained with me, though. Hope and light have always had a way of finding me and helping me to find my way.