Leo Tolstoy’s novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich carries a valuable lesson for mankind. It elaborates through details about how making a living and creating wealth cannot always be good for you but most of the time in the end it’s all worthless in the eyes of a dying person. He argues that all human beings are eventually going to die, and the wealth and money earned or created will be left in this world but the only thing that would matter is the memories they made with the loved ones or the adventures they went on. Ivan Ilyich surrounded himself with people who were just like him, only ambition being creating money and wealth. So, when he died, the only thing they cared about was that his death created a vacancy and chances of promotion, he did not create bonds with people who would actually miss him or grieve for him, and the people who actually did care about him, he pushed them away and instead went of focusing on his work. Life is too short to be spent in one direction. This story resonates with our society today as well, especially during these times of the pandemic. This pandemic has taught us that your life can take a drastic turn at any point so we should make sure that we enjoy our life as we go and for me personally, to not just spend all my time at work and in school but to go out a little, travel the world while I can. We are always going to make money and have many opportunities at different places but there are memories that can be made before we run out of time. Life is about living, how you live is on you, you can just survive or actually live.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts about The Death of Ivan Ilyich. One thing that we see in Ivan’s life and in our own life experience is that, no matter how much planning we do and no matter what our achievements, some things in life will always be beyond our control.