Philosophy Is Immortality

The child laughs: “My wisdom and love are the game”.

The youth sings: “My game and wisdom are the love”.

The old man is silent: “My love and game are the wisdom”.

Lucian Blaga, Poems

We used to say that it was not in our power to choose our parents, that they were given us by chance: but we, the philosophers, are allowed to be born as we wish. The most famous personalities form families: choose the one you want to be part of. You will receive both their praise and possessions that you will not have to keep them for your greed or pettiness. These will increase the more you share them more.

They will open you a path to eternity and raise you to a place where no one has collapsed. This is the only way to overcome the mortal state and even turn it into immortality.

Honors, monuments, all the verdicts given by the ambitions or all the works made by it are falling apart soon; anything can be ruined or collapsed by long ages. But to those whom wisdom consecrated, it cannot touch them anymore.

Therefore, the life of the wise man will take a long time. He is not closed in the same boundaries as the others. He alone is freed from the laws of mankind. All centuries obey him as a god.

Is it about a past time ? The wise man will include it through his memories. The present ? He uses it. How about the future, he already enjoys it. Uniting all these moments makes his life longer.

from Seneca, The Eulogy of Philosophy

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Tatiana Tolstaya – Remembering Leo Tolstoy

In an investigation, a Parisian newspaper asked the question: what sign makes us recognize the coming of old age ?  Someone replied: old age comes when your memories overwhelm you.

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

 For some time I have felt this very intense. In my moments of loneliness, I see fragments from my past. I review a certain scene, think I hear voices… These memories are often related to my father, Leo Tolstoy, who was everything  I had dearest and brighter in my life.

I can not always relate them to events that preceded or followed them, nor to fix them at a certain date. But I see the episode as if it had happened yesterday. I write down these  “memory flashes” as they emerge.

Dad Gets a Baksheesh

From Moscow to Iasnaia Poliana is about 200 km and sometimes my father was walking this way. With the bag in his back, he mingled among the pilgrims he was interested in, but for whom he has been just a simple traveler. He was making this trip in five days. On the way, he stopped eating and sleeping in a wooden house or at a country inn. When he approached a train station, he went to eat in the waiting room of the third class.

In one of these stops, walking on the platform where a train was ready to leave, he heard someone call him.

“Hey, old man, old man !”, a woman yelled from the train window. “Do you want to go to the woman’s toilet and bring me the bag that I left there ? But go quickly, because the train leaves soon.”

My dad ran to the women’s toilet where he was lucky to find the bag, and then gave it to the lady.

“Thank you very much,” said the lady, and gave him a large bronze coin.

“Do you know who you gave those five kopecks ?”, asked her a traveler who recognized the dusty pilgrim as being the author of the book War and Peace. “To Leo Tolstoy !”

“God, what  have I done ! Lev Nikolayevich, Lev Nikolayevich ! Please forgive me and give me back the five kopecks I gave you out of my stupidity .”

“Why ?”, my dad answered. You didn’t do anything wrong. The five kopecks I won honestly. I keep them…”

The train moved into motion, carrying with it the lady who continued to apologize, bagging Tolstoy to give her the coin back.

Tolstoy, with a smile, was watching the train moving away.

from Tatiana Tolstaya, Avec Leon Tolstoi. Souvenirs

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