Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilych"

I have just finished reading Tolstoy’s brilliant short story, “The Death of Ivan Ilych” and it occurs to me how ridiculous much of my life is, how unimportant most of it is; not in a depressing way, in a liberating way; not unimportant or ridiculous in what I do but rather in how I do it. It occurs to me, afresh, that it doesn’t really matter what I do; the only thing that matters is how I do it – do I do it with love (or other versions of ‘Love’ : Presence, play, Joy, attention)?

There are so many ways of NOT doing what I do with love that I am not really going to waste time trying to list them. I am either loving or doing something else that is not-love (worry, getting it out of the way, has to be done to earn the paycheck, nobody else will do it, expected of me, hate, ad infinitum).

On any occasion where I look death in the face, just as with Ivan Ilych, I think mental pain will be more severe than physical pain if I look back and realize that I have not loved enough. It is not just the big love either – mate, children, parents, friends; it is also in the tiny little moments of everyday life, the myriad ‘nows’ in which life happens where I can choose the ‘how’ of love over ‘hows’ that are not love.

Life is sooooo beautiful, magnificent and perfect; The great equalizer: How we do life matters and What life we do doesn’t matter. The “HaHaHa AHA!” of the suddenly enlightened student who has just been whacked on the head by the Zen master: Ditch digger, doctor, CEO, peon, investment banker, artist, Drill Baby Drill, environmental activist, rich, poor, Muslim, Jew, Christian….. HaHaHa! It’s all an illusion because it is all just made up from the fabric of “Now.’

No belief or activity or line of work is any better, more necessary, or more real than any other.

I have this truly ugly love seat that I bought on a whim from a consignment shop. The woven fabric of the love seat depicts a rustic country scene of farmhouses, roosters, apple trees, dogs frolicking, ducks swimming, and sheep grazing; all done in bright greens, whites, reds, browns, blues and gold. There is SO MUCH going on in that fabric.

One day I kneel on the cushions, get really close to the back of the love seat and I can follow an individual strand of the fabric as it runs its way from left to right all the way across the back. That strand passes through every one of those scenes, becoming each of the bright, contrasting colors. Right now even as I type I have set the laptop on the seat and I follow it through roof tiles, a white bunny, a red tulip, the green leaf of a tree, the bark of the same tree, a red apple, a white dog, a black dog, blue water, a white sheep, and then it repeats the pattern --- and it is the SAME THREAD. Of course every 16th of an inch the horizontal thread disappears behind another thread running vertically up the back of the seat - the warp and woof of existence. The picture is the illusion made by the dying and weaving of the fabric, the fabric is real.

Same with Life.

What we have in common is so much greater than what divides us; ummmm actually ☺ - we only have in common (the fabric) - what divides us is an illusion (the pictures). Really? OMG, the same thread passes through me AND Sarah Palin? And Osama Bin Laden? AND George Bush? And that mud puddle? And that blue sky? OMFG!

So what does Fabric have to do with Ivan Ilych?

To me, a life well lived consists of awareness of the fabric of life (Backstage) instead of being caught up in the pretty or ugly pictures created by that fabric. Awareness of the fabric gives me the freedom to enjoy the pictures, the beautiful as well as the ugly, and results in more moments of friskiness, beauty, passion, wild joy, love, Presence and Union.