March 11, 2014

Life Lesson 3: Make a difference

Tolstoy Ploughing (c.1889) by Ilya Repin
For an upper-class literary gent, Tolstoy made a notable effort to take practical action to alleviate other people's suffering. His dedication to the peasantry was nowhere more evident than in his famine relief work. After the crop failure of 1873, Tolstoy decided to stop writing Anna Karenina for a year to organize aid for the starving, remarking to a relative, "I cannot tear myself away from living creatures to bother about imaginary ones." His friends and family thought it crazy that one of the finest novelists in the world would put one of his works of genius on the backburner. But Tolstoy was adamant. He did it again after the famine in 1891, and with other members of his family spent the next two years raising money from around the world and working in soup kitchens. Can you imagine a bestselling author today setting aside their latest book to do humanitarian relief work for two years?

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