A Virtuous Life (Part I)

Tolstoy wrote a short story called The Death of Ivan Ilyich. I haven’t read it, but I know the premise. On his deathbed, the protagonist laments, “What if my whole life has been wrong?”

That’s a scary thought, especially when one considers that Jacob Marley, in A Christmas Carol and also on his deathbed, knew that his life had been wrong.

Only it hadn’t been. Neither had Ivan’s. Neither is mine. Nor is yours.

Nobody’s life is ever “wrong”. We may regret, at the end, how we chose to live it, but life is meant to teach us by letting us make mistakes. Even poor choices are merely choices, decisions made whether or not we are aware of making them.

The saddest choice a person can make is to give up too soon. Children are shaped by external influences: parents, siblings, friends, peers, media, religion, etc. The first thirty years of my life (this time) were spent in pursuit of someone else’s idea of happiness. During those years, I believed my primary purpose was to marry and have children, be a support to hubby and a pillar in my community. Failing that (which I did), I was expected to get a secure job and settle into the role of small spanner in the larger works.

Writing was a nice-to-have.

It still is.

I had my midlife crisis at thirty. By religious standards, I was past my best-before date and other women my age were married and bearing children. What was wrong with me that I wasn’t able to do the same?

Only upon closer inspection did I discover that—gasp!—I was happy with my life. Oh, it was a little rough, being gainfully unemployed and still on the marriage market, but Ter and I were making ends meet and having a ball wherever possible. I was writing, she was drawing, we were young, optimistic, and I still had my Mustang. We regularly tripped to Vancouver for rock concerts and went to the movies a lot; even after we landed those secure jobs and became pension prisoners, we spent our cruise/golfing vacation money on Def Leppard and Duran Duran tickets—more than once!

After I turned forty, I started thinking more deeply about life’s meaning. More importantly, about my life’s meaning. I’ve heard that we spend most of our lives trying to become who we were when we started in those magical, new-penny moments after we were born. Everyone comes to this world with a plan and pure intent. The first half of our life messes us up, and we spend the rest of it (hopefully) getting back to ourselves.

This involves unlearning what loving but fallible folks have taught us from day one, and unlistening to the know-it-all ego that has its own motivation for holding us back. It’s a process that requires daily recalibration and ongoing forgiveness of ourselves and others. Most of us will depart this estate with a greater understanding than we had when we arrived. Some of us won’t—but guess what? They get to repeat Grade Three! 

… to be continued