Day 0038

Finished off the three graces drawing this evening. It's not as accurate as I had hoped, but I don't have the energy to correct it.

In jet-lag induced bouts of wakefulness in the middle of the night I began reading Sofia Tolstoy's diaries. A lot of pain and a lot of boredom and crushed hope. Lives destined to repeat. We can read the diaries and see the problems but can we actually learn from them ourselves? In a real way, that changes our behaviour, rather than just in an intellectual way? Tolstoy read her diaries but did that change how he acted towards her? Passive cries for attention unheeded except when expedient.

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himselfLeo Tolstoy

Tolstoy changed himself drastically over his lifetime but only in so far as was agreeable to his intellectual and spiritual aims. He was a distant, cold father to many of his children in their earliest years, and he was not infrequently a bad husband to Sofia. He hypocritically preached about chastity in marriage and other virtues he knew he did not possess. He agonized over this hypocrisy, but he didn't change himself to resolve it.

There is a piety to be found in self-loathing which salves some of the pain and discourages you from actually doing anything to improve yourself. If hating your own human weakness was an unalloyed agony it would be much easier to change, but secretly we know that rather than change ourselves for the better it is easier to ask for forgiveness for folly and indulge ourselves in whatever is the least disagreeable or least inconvenient course of action, regardless of its virtue.

I will not change my largest faults because I don't have the willpower and I can get by without doing so. I only have the motivation to do things that come easily and feed my most positive image of myself. Ultimately I spend my energy selfishly on things that don't fundamentally change who I am, even though I know what needs to be changed to make me a better person. I should be more forgiving, more open, allow myself into positions where I can be made a fool of, do things outside of my comfort zone, face up to fears, do things when I should, not put off everything, stop avoiding responsibilities, stop being bitter, jealous and self-centred, stop being a coward and think more of other people and not how they can be of use to me. Instead I pour my energies and thoughts into things I'm already good at in the vainglorious pursuit of more praise and attention.

The real masterpiece, the real work of art, should be you yourself. Perfection of an art is not a route to true happiness unless you also perfect yourself.

And because I neglect to change anything about myself, I perpetrate the same mistakes and run into the same mental ruts time and again, and never learn anything new.