Life is Happiness

“When I look back at the past and think how much time was spent in vain, how much of it was lost in delusions, in errors, in idleness, in the inability to live; how I failed to value it, how many times I sinned against my heart and spirit — then my heart contracts in pain. Life is a gift, life is happiness, each moment could have been an eternity of happiness. Si jeunesse savait! [If youth knew!]” -Fyodor Dostoyevsky

In Dostoyevsky’s late twenties, he was sentenced to death.

Fyodor had been a member of a literary society that circulated books outlawed by the Tsar of Russia. Dostoyevsky was marched into the middle of a public square, read his death sentence, and rested his head on a literal chopping block.

Just before the saber was raised for the killing blow, it was announced that the Tsar had decided to pardon the detractors’ lives. Instead of death, the men were to be sent to a labor camp and then forced into military service. He wouldn’t be free until his forties but a gloomy decade wouldn’t stop him from penning today’s quote.

In a letter to his brother, after just escaping death and moments before being shipped to Siberia, Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote “Life is a gift, life is happiness”.

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