three questions, tolstoy style
Posted on March 16, 2007
Filed Under kids, parenting, snark |
If you are familiar with Leo Tolstoy’s short story, The Three Questions or the children’s book by Jon J. Muth of the same name, then you already know that the Three Questions are:
When is the best time to do things?
Who is the most important one?
What is the right thing to do?
And you’ll also know the answers to these questions:
There is only one important time and that is now.
The most important one is always the one you are with.
The most important thing is to do good for the one who is standing at your side.
I was reading The Three Questions to my kids last night and finished with the line, “This is why we are here.” I sighed, thinking what a great message, before sliding into my natural state of pessimism and resistance.
I know only two people who actually live their lives this way (Colleen and my Mother in Law) and they are on the short track to Heaven, no doubt. I admire them their saintliness but will reveal to you that their refrigerators are a mess and they often have no clean clothes because the laundry just doesn’t get done. Is there a “right” time to do laundry or clean the refrigerator?
Now I ask you, did Tolstoy ever spend an afternoon with a crying newborn? If so he might have shot himself in the face while thinking, “the only important time is now”. I suspect, after several hours of wailing, he might have actually begun to think that the only important time is when this child’s mother gets back and I can fix myself a thermos of vodka.
And I wonder if Leo ever spent three hours at a PTA meeting with other parents expounding, ad nauseam, on what type of lock was needed on the playground gate as the current one was an insufficient deterrent to terrorists and pedophiles. (The gate in question was three feet tall. I’m sure he would have asked, “Can’t these terrorists or pedophiles jump?”) The near hysteria in the room may have forced him to change his notion of wanting to do good for the ones he was with at the time. I suspect that he may have felt something akin to malicious contempt, finding it hard not to suggest that the solution to the problem was to remove the gate to the playground altogether, explaining that recess would be made more intensely interactive by allowing the children to play in traffic, traffic consisting of pedophiles and terrorists driving recklessly.
I’m quite sure Tolstoy never had the misfortune of sitting next to the mad conversationalist with the foul breath on an overseas flight. Did I mention that this stranger with the gift of gab and the halitosis also had a propensity to fall over when dozing to drool on his seat mate’s shoulder? I think Leo may have decided, after only a few minutes with this person, that there is only one important time and that is when I get myself off this flight, the most important one must be someone other than my in-flight neighbor because otherwise I wouldn’t be feeling homicidal right now and the most important thing I can do for the person at my side is ask for a seat change before I shove the barf bag down his throat to prevent his snoring and drooling and emitting toxic carbon dioxide in my general vicinity.
Thank you for the sentiments Tolstoy, but the answers to your three questions are SOOOO 18th century.
So I’d like to pose my own, modern day, Three Questions and feel free to posit any answers that you may think appropriate for 21st century discourse.
1. When is Sonjaya going to be voted off ‘Idol’? As Randy Jackson so aptly said, “You’re rocking the hair, man. If this were Hair Idol? You’d have it jumping off!” But alas, it’s not Hair Idol so WTF?
2. Who is the wiser for my having dropped a grocery bag full of dog shit in someone’s recycling bin while jogging yesterday? I don’t want to be an asshole but who wants to jog with a bag full of dog feces slapping against their thigh?
3. What music do elementary students groove to these days? I’m in charge of the Cake Walk at school on the 30th and need to put together a play list for this event. Something without profanity and overtly sexual lyrics. I’m stumped.
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6 Responses to “three questions, tolstoy style”
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I think it easy to tie Tolstoy’s questions to meditative, eastern thought. And to this I ask, to what extent does that whole zen thing depend upon the external as opposed to the internal?
I remember sitting on the high cliffs over-looking Israel’s Dead Dea. It was a cool desert morning. The sun began to rise, and with it a quickening of the breeze. It was magical.
I remember sitting at the top of Mount Haleakala a stiff 40 degree breeze blew as if to spite the tropical location. Clouds lay below. The Sun’s rise brought instant, radiant warmth to my cheeks. It was magical.
I remember sitting in a garage. The lug nuts on the flat tire had been torqued on with the force of 10 men. I stood on the wrench. The lug nut gave way, spinning the wrench into my shin. I stuffed my pain and, taking a break, watched the blood trickle, mix with sweat and drip onto the oily floor. It was hot. I was tired. I had four more lug-nuts to go. It was not magical. I was not one.
Re: the dog feces: congratulate yourself on the fact that you were jogging when you “recycled the doggie bag”, thereby restoring your body and mind to a higher, healthier plane, which then enables you to deal with the sarcasm of a 6 or 8 year old without your head spinning around ala Linda Blair. (P.S. I don’t jog…and my kids have inherited a lot of my sarcasm — as chesca can well testify!)
I’d go with eclectic music for the cake walk. Follow AC/DC’s “Back in Black” with a polka. Rapper’s Delight followed by “Flight of the Bumble-bee”. ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ followed by a Waltz. Find some Fiddlin’. Use at least one Country song. And don’t forget to use at least one Justin Timberlake song just to show you down with chillins.
Problem is…all the Justin songs of late are a little down tempo for the occasion. It needs to be Cake Skip rather than a Cake Crawl, ya know?
did you know that sonjaya has an army of idol-haters voting for him each week? apparently, their strategy is working. (don’t ask why i know this -well, i’m sure you can guess).
Wow, the intricacy of Idol voting rivals the plot of the Good Shepherd.