Let every minute of life be a century of happiness... \ stacker news ~BooksAndArticles

On December 22, 1849, early in the morning, Dostoyevsky was taken to Seminovsky Square in St Petersburg to be executed. When the sentence was read to him, Dostoyevsky instinctively recalled his whole life. There are many such testimonies of people who, in the last moments of their lives, have their whole lives flash before their eyes. Dostoyevsky also had a similar experience while waiting to be executed.

They were separated into groups of three. The first group of three was executed first. He was in the next group. He had five minutes to live before he was shot. In these five minutes, he greeted his friends and looked around for the last time. He looked with joy at the things he would never see again. Eh, who can guess what thoughts crossed his mind in those moments? Well, anyone who has read his book "The Idiot" understands to some extent what Dostoyevsky experienced in these moments because in that novel he described the experience of what he believed to be the last moments of his life. The story of a young man sentenced to death by the firing squad, who is reprieved at the last moment, is told by the main character, Prince Myshkin, who describes the experience from the victim's point of view.

But while the kettledrums sounded and he waited for the order to "fire", a carriage arrived from which an officer stepped out with a letter in his hand sparing his life and commuting his sentence from death to four years' exile in Siberia.

So the authorities sent him back to the Petropavlovsk fortress from where they had taken him that morning. In these moments, locked in the castle after such an ordeal, he had the opportunity to think about himself, his past, and many other things. There were no longer just five mines to think about, but many days, weeks, months, years...

That night, after being sent back to the Petropavlovsk castle, Dostoyevsky wrote a letter to his brother. Among other things, he told him:

"When I look back on my life and think how much time I wasted on useless things, how I wasted my life not knowing how to live, not knowing how to value my time, when I think how much I sinned against myself and my soul, then my heart groans. Life, my brother, is a gift, life is happiness. Let every minute of life be a century of happiness. Now that I have changed my way of life, I am reborn as a new man.

111 sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury 10 Apr

I wonder if this is a lesson anyone can take, in practice. It's inspirational in theory -- I'm stirred up, imagining the scene you've described. But how long could you go in the world with a real sense of your imminent mortality? It's an interesting question. I suppose people with terminal illnesses would give some part of an answer.

27 sats \ 0 replies \ @Taft OP 10 Apr

But how long could you go in the world with a real sense of your imminent mortality?

I don't have an answer to this question. I believe that you cannot live every second of your life with the sense of your imminent mortality (even those with terminal illness, I think), because this fact can lead you towards depression, but you cannot also live as you are never going to die. Probably, the key is finding the balance between these two extremes.