Where we are is not where we want to be...

I often wonder: suppose we could begin life over again, knowing what we were doing? Suppose we could use one life, already ended, as a sort of rough draft for another? I think that every one of us would try, more than anything else, not to repeat himself, at the very least he would rearrange his manner of life, he would make sure of rooms like these, with flowers and light ... I have a wife and two daughters, my wife's health is delicate and so on and so on, and if I had to begin life all over again I would not marry... No, no!

I don't think there can really be a town so dull and stupid as to have no place for a clever, cultured person. Let us suppose even that among the hundred thousand inhabitants of this backward and uneducated town, there are only three persons like yourself. It stands to reason that you won't be able to conquer that dark mob around you; little by little as you grow older you will be bound to give way and lose yourselves in this crowd of a hundred thousand human beings; their life will suck you up in itself, but still, you won't disappear having influenced nobody; later on, others like you will come, perhaps six of them, then twelve, and so on, until at last your sort will be in the majority. In two or three hundred years' time life on this earth will be unimaginably beautiful and wonderful. Mankind needs such a life, and if it is not ours today then we must look ahead for it, wait, think, prepare for it. We must see and know more than our fathers and grandfathers saw and knew.

What seems to us serious, significant and important will, in future times, be forgotten or won’t seem important at all.

In Moscow you can sit in an enormous restaurant where you don't know anybody and where nobody knows you, and you don't feel all the same that you're a stranger. And here you know everybody and everybody knows you, and you're a stranger... and a lonely stranger.

To Moscow, to Moscow, to Moscow!

It's curious that we can't possibly tell what exactly will be considered great and important, and what will seem paltry and ridiculous. Did not the discoveries of Copernicus or Columbus, let us say, seem useless and ridiculous at first, while the nonsensical writings of some wiseacre seemed true?

I used to know a certain amount five-and-twenty years ago, but I don't remember anything now. Nothing. Perhaps I'm not really a man, and am only pretending that I've got arms and legs and a head; perhaps I don't exist at all, and only imagine that I walk, and eat, and sleep.... The devil only knows.

We must work, work. That is why we are unhappy and look at the world so sadly; we don't know what work is.

I can't make you love me by force, of course... but I don't intend to have any more-favored rivals... No... I swear to you by all the saints, I shall kill my rival... Oh, beautiful one!

A few days ago I was reading the prison diary of a French minister. He had been sentenced on account of the Panama scandal. With what joy, what delight, he speaks of the birds he saw through the prison windows, which he had never noticed while he was a minister. Now, of course, that he is at liberty, he notices birds no more than he did before. When you go to live in Moscow you'll not notice it, in just the same way. There can be no happiness for us, it only exists in our wishes.

After us they’ll fly in hot air balloons, coat styles will change, perhaps they’ll discover a sixth sense and cultivate it, but life will remain the same, a hard life full of secrets, but happy. And a thousand years from now man will still be sighing, “Oh! Life is so hard!” and will still, like now, be afraid of death and not want to die.

It seems to me that a man must have faith, or must search for a faith, or his life will be empty, empty.... To live and not to know why the cranes fly, why babies are born, why there are stars in the sky.... Either you must know why you live, or everything is trivial, not worth a straw.

Time will pass, and we shall go away for ever, and we shall be forgotten, our faces will be forgotten, our voices, and how many there were of us; but our sufferings will pass into joy for those who will live after us, happiness and peace will be established upon earth, and they will remember kindly and bless those who have lived before.

Mankind is looking for something, and will certainly find it. Oh, if it only happened more quickly.

~ Extract from 'The Three Sisters' by Anton Chekhov.

Comments

Omer said…
Very nice Isbah..

If we just put an entry point n rollback our life to it and do the things we really wanted to do or correct the mistakes we still regret n so on.....

I just wish this could happen :S
khany said…
it appears that the author has captured the stream of thoughts of person with a conflicted mind. jumps between the various ideas that are discussed are quite unexpected. in defense of the author, i guess these are reflective of the true nature of how our mind work.

there are nuggets of good observations developed in each paragraph however i don't find any argument, compelling or otherwise, which connects them to the final conclusion, "happiness and peace will be established on earth"!

the person whose thoughts are described appears acutely depressed. in spite of his pessimism he seems to hold on to the belief that eventually everything will turn out rosy! i feel this desperate hope only underscores the reality of his hopelessness.

i think people who live in past, as opposed to those who simply revisit it to derive lessons, invest little faith in the future. they are so fixated on how life could have been that they lose sight of what they can make of the life ahead of them.

this makes me really wonder if such people given a second chance would live life any differently (the question which begins the excerpt). if we cannot expect these people to change themselves in their present life based on their experiences in their immediate past, then what hope can we realistically have that they will live differently if they were reincarnated in another independent lifetime!

it reminds me of the verse.
(006:027)
If thou couldst but see when they are confronted with the Fire! They will say: "Would that we were but sent back! Then would we not reject the signs of our Lord, but would be amongst those who believe!"
(006:028)
Yea, in their own (eyes) will become manifest what before they concealed. But if they were returned, they would certainly relapse to the things they were forbidden, for they are indeed liars.

god not only has intimate knowledge of the past, present and future. but he also has perfect knowledge of hypothetical situations, e.g. what would happen if...?

i hope my thoughts were more coherent than the ones i set to criticize :)
Syra said…
Interesting passage!
My thoughts wandered and reminded me of this:
"Man can be free\happy the moment he wants to be" (if i remember correctly this was your tagline).

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