Ryan Larson - Tolstoy and the Journey's End

 I recently finished reading Tolstoy's War and Peace, and one of the characters has stuck out to me in particular. The character, named Pierre Bezukhov, is a Russian member of high society who inherits a large fortune at the beginning of the book. (Spoiler alert, by the way.) Pierre spends most of the book trying to discover what will make him happy. Getting all that money, for one thing, doesn't. It only causes him more anxiety and doubt-- who to give to? where to spend it? The next thing he tries is getting a wife. However, he finds that he doesn't really like her, and they prefer to be separated. Next, he is recruited into the Freemasons (a religious sort of men's club back in the day), and becomes a devout Christian. He utilizes his newfound morals to try and improve the condition of his serfs, but he isn't a very good businessman so he is largely unsuccessful. But after all this, he isn't truly happy. 

Pierre's ultimate form of happiness comes in an unexpected way-- he is captured by the French during the French invasion of Russia and spends a month as a prisoner of war. This month of confinement helps Pierre learn to appreciate life, and he emerges a new man.

The point being, at least in regard to the inner journey, Pierre doesn't know how to reach his goal until he does it. With each new development he thinks he's finally secured complete happiness, but after some time he discovers that this is not the case. This might make the reader question: How do we know when our journey is over? Do journeys even have a definite end, or do they just evolve and change direction? 

Typically in a story, the hero starts the journey with a goal to accomplish, and ends the journey having accomplished it. But this is often not indicative of real life. How many times have you changed your goal, aspirations or ideas before you reach any objective? As freshmen, some of us have probably already switched majors. And when we do reach these goals, how often is it that we realize the goal isn't what we wanted in the first place? Perhaps the journey should not be thought of as a one-dimensional line with a beginning and end, but as a two-dimensional map that we wander around with vague ideas of direction, occasionally doubling back or walking in circles.

I remember a movie scene I saw once (I don't remember what movie) where two lovers finally have each other after the guy crashes a wedding or something. They're sitting on a bus driving away at the end of the movie and as the shot lingers, their expressions slowly shift from joy to indecision to uncertainty. Now what? I think that life can often be the same way. Getting the girl or making it big or whatever isn't the end goal, it's just the start of a new cycle in the journey.

It's something to think about, I suppose.

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