simple yet complex ... life's conundrum

Woke up at 1am and can't get back to sleep. So I'm waiting till sleep comes. Finished Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. I love how the character Levin finally arrived to the conclusion of figuring out his purpose. It was quite simple, yet ... complex. The conundrum of life. Nothing is as simple as it seems. Yet the answer is always in the simplicity of everything. It is in human nature to make it complicated.

My favorite lines:
".. my life now, my whole life, regardless of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, it is not only NOT meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which it is in my power to put into it.

I sought an answer to my question. But the answer to my question could not come from thought, which is incommensirable with the question. The answer was given by life itself, in my knowledge of what is good or bad. And I did not acquire that knowledge through anything. It was given to me as it is to everyone. Given because I could not take it from anywhere.

There is no condition to which a person can grow accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone aroubnd him lives in the same way."


- Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy (translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky)

So I guess that's it. Eureka! The purpose of man is to do good. A purpose that is inborn because it is revealed to man as soon as he became aware of his world. This must be faith, Levin said. To know something, without undestanding why. :) So my purpose is to do good ... in whatever way I can. My goal is to be happy ...doing what it is I choose to love. I think I understood this, but somehow, had difficulty grasping it. Reasoning clouds judgement. So I forget this basic revelation.

Galing ni Lord! To think that man finds it difficult to understand this simplicity ... and finds it easy to live its complexity. :)

Deep? Maybe I just need more sleep ...

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