When I was 17, I thought canker sores were herpes. And even though I’d never kissed a girl, I thought I had herpes.
Why did I think that? Because canker sores sucks.
I’ve been plagued with canker sores for most of my life. When I hit a bad stretch, as I just did (upper middle lip AND upper right cheek), life becomes noticeably worse. Coffee is hard to drink. The straw on my Stanley hurts. Meals are suffering. And when I forget about it, whether it be for a minute or an hour, I’m always rudely reminded eventually.
Similar to a sore throat, it’s so noticeable when things go back to normal. The day I finally recover I feel an amazing sense of relief; an appreciation for the little things. I won’t take life for granted again!
Then of course that satisfaction fades quickly and normal life resumes.
Which brings me to Ivan Ilych.
I just finished Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych (hold your applause, it’s like 60 pages long). The book chronicles the life of Ivan Ilych in the late 1800s. For his first ~45 years he lives a good life as a good man; he’s smart, charismatic, people like and respect him, he does things the right way. Until he develops mysterious pain in his side and this illness ultimately kills him a few months later.
There are many things one can draw from reading the book that I won’t get into, but something I draw particularly related to this post is chronic pain robs life of meaning*. Things you used to care about or look forward to are completely irrelevant. In fact they become worth giving up completely if only it would take away the pain.
But no matter what, it’s impossible to remain grateful for any of it when you’re NOT going through that. No matter how many canker sores I have or how many times I read this book (it will probably remain once), I will inevitably retreat to my daily life of caring about things that don’t seem worth caring about when you’re terminally ill.
And that’s just part of life. Maybe Ivan Ilych would disagree and say that if only he survived his illness, he would never waste another second on meaningless things like his house. But after a few weeks, I think he would. And I think that’s human. And that’s okay (not to spoil the book, but ultimately Ivan accepts death, then he dies).
*If you want to get all indignant and say the message of the book was ultimately his pain and death showed him what true meaning was, then that’s fine. I agree. But it doesn’t jive with my post.
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