How Much Land?
A Lesson from Tolstoy
“I’m dropping Mom & Dad off at the airport. They’re going on a flight to India.”
That’s weird, I thought. My parents don’t go on unplanned trips to India unless there’s something wrong.
I was at the Mojave Desert for work and didn’t get decent cell reception until I reached the hotel 16 hrs. later. I responded even though I knew my parents were already in the air by then.
I scrolled through the WhatsApp messages and found out why they left.
Pictures of my uncle filled the chat. First looking like an emaciated corpse. Then a hospital bed with tubes running out of him. And finally, of his passing.
Within 10 messages, my uncle went from alive to dead.
Back in December I had lost my uncle when he was removed from life support. Now, I lost another after a battle with pancreatic cancer. But I wasn’t there for his burial.
I was still in the desert for 2 more weeks.
The next day, I stared at the mountains jutting from the earth, tracing the horizon. My uncle was a farmer, he would’ve hated this place.
His farm was decent in India.
You could see the end from the house. It didn’t stretch for miles like others, nor did he boast any lavish crops, only rice, mangoes, and onions.
I used to chase after the endless farmlands for me. I never worked on a farm, but my farmland was work. Building it out until the sunset on my accolades. But not anymore.
Recently I stumbled upon a short story by Tolstoy called “How Much Land does a Man Need?”
It follows a peasant who tries to snag as much land as he can. He meets with a village leader who owns arable land. The leader says you can have as much land as you can cover on foot by sundown.
The peasant takes off running. He covered a huge amount of land. By the sunset, he stopped and collapsed.
The villagers picked him up and buried him.
Six feet from his head to his heels was all he needed.
It’s the same for all of us.