On The Shortness of Life
Took a long time to read and even more to digest because I couldn't help but come back to the concepts and read them over and over again. This book is a different experience, maybe because it is a painfully honest letter to a friend from Seneca.
"It is not that we don't have enough time, but that we waste a lot of it."
It actually is one of the few pieces of literature that makes you think hard about the choices you have made so far in life and indirectly pushes you to be more aware of how little time you have on earth through various historic examples like Augustus and Caesar to name a few. There are many more one liners in the book that make you want to stare at the ceiling and contemplate your existence.
The book talks about the role of 'leisure' and how it destroyed the perception of many great men and still keeps on doing so to this day. The concept of people who are 'preoccupied' and how their lives pass them by is also quite fascinating to think about especially in this day and age when the preoccupations are endless and inescapable. The issues described in the philosophy are amplified a thousand times in the 21st century with the technology that we have now and everyone is way less aware than they used to be.
The best thing about this book is that the concepts still have a lot of weight even after 2000 years and really make you think hard and might even make you existential. I don't think anyone can stay the same after reading this. It will change you in ways that you never expected, for better or worse. I can feel it becoming one of my favorite books and one that I will keep coming back to for that sweet dose of reality checks. Everyone should read it regardless of liking ancient Greek philosophy or not.
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
"All of my life had been getting worse and worse, in inverse proportion to the square of the distance from death."
I've not read anything that comes even close to describing how horrifying the process of dying is as this short story does. It takes you inside the mind of Ivan Ilyich, a good man who is dying, and you slowly witness him break down and get reduced to nothing over just fifty pages. It reminded me a lot of When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi, which is like a real-life parallel of this book.
"Here comes judgment! But I’m not guilty,’ he cried out angrily. ‘What is this for?"
You witness him constantly undergo existential crises and get spiritually conflicted throughout the story, questioning God and everything that he knew about life, wondering where he went wrong and being unfathomably helpless when he can't seem to find the answers to any of his questions. The story also has a great way to show the mixed perception people adapt to when someone close to them is on the deathbed.
It was fascinating to see how differently his family started to think of him because he was unable to provide for them anymore, how his wife and children always found a way to make it all about themselves and robbed him of even the basic empathy that he deserved to the point where he started to hate everything and could only open up to someone outside his family. And even with them, he felt like 'dirt' and a 'disorder' who was in their way.
The metaphor was painfully similar to Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, and it kept getting worse as you read on the story, and the way his perception of himself started to degrade was very close to how the old man was portrayed in The Telltale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe. You see him go through all stages of grief one by one and be miserable and helpless in all of them. All you can do is sit silently with him and watch him take his last breath.
He also starts to recall his childhood whenever he is deeply engulfed in pain, as it was the only time when he felt happy. This was an amazing inference considering that many people believe in the idea that we see our entire lives, from childhood leading up to that moment of death when we are dying.
This book moved me in a way that not a lot of books have and is definitely one that I can see myself coming back to. Its one of those pieces of literature that makes you question your own life choices. And if you have experienced anyone close to you passing away tragically and slowly from an illness, there is no way to finish this book without shedding a few tears.
The Last Question
This is the type of literature that is fuel for the optimists, people who are constantly trying to get ahead of the limitation of humanity through various vehicles wether it be technology or medicine or anything else you can think of.
It was also fascinating to realize how, in 1950s, Asimov predicted the future that we are just now starting to uncover with all LLMs getting better day by day and the possibilities of AGI looming around over the horizon. Asimov had the type of nerdness only a few beings can fathom on this Earth. Definitely going to get more into Asimov’s work.
Metamorphosis
Gave myself a challenge to read it in one sitting, and I was not disappointed. The coherence of thoughts that came after finishing it in 2 hours was different this time. It felt more tragic and profound than I remember it from tenth grade, maybe because now I have a little more life experience and a couple more failures under my belt.
A really weird realization I had while reading was how even though Gregor was a burden and a bug, he was still the most human of all the human beings present in that house. What happens to the familial love when a member of the family is demeaned to the point where he ceases to be human and is just a burden for everyone around him?
The story can also be considered a great critique of capitalism and how it affects the dynamics of families and makes them dependent and helpless in the face of adversities, something that I never thought about when I was an innocent child. It all attains a deeper meaning when you read about Kafka's own life and how parallel it is to the story.
He contracted tuberculosis and was bedridden in the ending moments of his life with nothing but his sister caring for him. The woman he loved dearly refused to give the love back to him (as we all very well know). He never published his work and died before ever realizing how profound, cathartic, and loved his work would be for the people around the world. A heartbreaking and terrifying end of a genius. He wrote a self-fulfilling prophecy.
But reading the most depressing literature always gives me hope somehow; it humbles me, and I realize that I don’t actually have it all that bad. I tend to take it all as a warning, and Metamorphosis is no different. But at the end of it all, I feel quite indebted to Kafka for providing some instances of catharsis and hope in my teens and shedding the light of much-needed optimism right now. I don’t think I can ever stop loving this book.
I have realized whenever I verbalize ideas about anything in the most nonconventional and basic ways, I tend to remember them more. This series is my attempt at doing that for all the books I read. This is how I think and how I often speak. These articles are less of a performance and more of an attempt at keeping a public record for my own accord. They are straight from the notes app and all unedited and as authentic as I could have possibly made them.
My goodreads is where I update all reading progress more often.