Believe
Some lessons from Maxim Gorky and Tolstoy for the Thanksgiving season.
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No. 53: Believe
There’s something about Thanksgiving that feels different from every other day of the year. A kind of compassionate love seems to hang in the air — like “Christmas spirit,” but stronger. Family or stranger, friend or foe, on Thanksgiving, people give, share, and welcome each other into their usually sheltered lives. It’s a day of togetherness. What’s more rare than that, especially now?
The rest of the year, people know there are other people living and working alongside them with lives as complex and rich as their own — people with their own families and friends, hopes and dreams, struggles and triumphs — but what's knowing? It’s just an acknowledgement, like when you tell a politician or decision maker the world burning and they reply, “I know . . . you’re 100% right . . . something must be done about it,” and then nothing is done.
On Thanksgiving, people believe in the humanity of others, instead of just acknowledging it with skepticism. Because on Thanksgiving there’s no questioning that you're just like everyone else, or, put differently, that everyone else is just like you. People everywhere are spending time with their families, making their memories, continuing their traditions, same as you. There’s the traffic-jammed freeway packed with people road-tripping to see their loved ones, the grocery store swarming with planning-challenged people scrambling to buy some last missing ingredient, the empty parks and trails vacated for crowded kitchens and cozy living rooms. Everything feels different, if only for a day.
At least, it feels different to me. And maybe that’s just because, earlier this week, I read The Crimean Notebooks, a little book by the Russian writer Maxim Gorky, who jotted down his reminiscences of the great Leo Tolstoy during a period spent living in Crimea with Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov.
Gorky recalls Tolstoy asking him one day, “exactly as if he was dealing [him] a blow,” why doesn’t he believe in God? Let “God” be what it will to you. Perhaps, in the context of this newsletter, the question might be rephrased, why don’t people believe in people?
Gorky replies, “I have no faith.”
To which Tolstoy says:
It is not true. By nature you are a believer, and you cannot get on without God. You will realize it one day. Your disbelief comes from obstinacy, because you have been hurt: the world is not what you would like it to be. There are also some people who do not believe out of shyness; it happens with young people; they adore some woman, but don’t want to show it from fear that she won’t understand, and also from lack of courage. Faith, like love, takes courage and daring. One has to say to oneself, ‘I believe,’ and everything will come right, everything will appear as you want it, it will explain itself to you and attract you. Now, you love much, and faith is only greater love: you must love still more, and then your love will turn to faith. When one loves a woman, she is, unfailingly, the best woman on earth, and each loves the best woman. That is faith. A nonbeliever cannot love: today he falls in love with one woman, and next year with another. The souls of such men are tramps living barren lives — that is not good. But you were born a believer, and it is no use thwarting yourself. Well, you may say, ‘Beauty?’ And what is beauty? The highest and most perfect is God.”
Love you all. Happy Thanksgiving. ♦
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