In Leo Tolstoy’s short story, The Death of Ivan Ilych, a successful judge lived a totally conventional life, which he only began to question as he was dying. In the final weeks when he is in great pain and the doctors have admitted their inability to help him, he is left in his bed and has to wrestle with his pain alone. He also, for the first time, begins to look back over his life and wonders about how he has lived. During this time, he hears an inner voice speaking to him:

“What is it you want?” was the first clear conception capable of expression in words, that he heard.

‘What do you want? What do you want?” he repeated to himself.

“What do I want? To live and not to suffer,” he answered.

And again he listened with such concentrated attention that even his pain did not distract him.

“To live? How?” asked his inner voice.

“Why, to live as I used to – well and pleasantly.”

“As you lived before, well and pleasantly?” the voice repeated.

Ivan comes to realize that ‘living pleasantly’ is an empty existence but it takes the process of dying to realize this. He has lived accountable to his community; he is accepted and considered respectable by his social circle and his associates in the legal profession. His family life is ‘comme il faut’ [as it should be] but his dying reveals the emptiness of his life. As Tolstoy put it: ‘Ivan Ilych’s life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.’ It was terrible because he had never reflected on his life, he had never tried to develop a self, he had never been accountable. He was a good example of a drunk asleep in the cart of life pulled this way and that by unknown impulses of which he was not even aware.” (Being Human, Peter Vardy, p.180,181)

The end of the year is a good time to take stock of one’s life. What does it consist of? Where is it going? What have I achieved? What is it worth? What do I want? What do I want my life to have been about? What are my goals? What kind of vision do I have for my life? What do I want my life to have been about?

It is possible to live a full life, and to achieve great things, and yet to have failed to love others. Many great successful men and women have left a legacy of significant work but have also done so at the expense of the way they have treated others, especially in their relationships with others; their marriage and family life. Their self-centered lives have been about fulfilling their talent but their relationships have suffered, and they have inflicted much hurt and pain on those around them.

As I reflect on the few years left for me on earth, retired after many years of fulfilling work I ask myself what do I want?

First of all, not fame or fortune but humility. Scripture is full of admonitions to have a humble and contrite spirit. God requires us to walk humbly with God. Jesus said that we should humble ourselves as little children, that whoever shall humble himself will be exalted, that we should remove the log in our own eye before we see the speck in the eyes of others. Contrition and confession of our sins is essential to our finding forgiveness. The older I get the more aware I am of my shortcomings, my failures and my need of a Redeemer and Savior. Sin-consciousness and guilt lead to a joyful experience of the amazing grace of God not because of merit or good works but the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross.

What do I want for the rest of my life? Secondly, to be able to support, encourage and love my wife and to provide for her who has been my supporter, encourager and lover for all of our married life together.

What do I want? Thirdly, to be able, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to witness to Jesus who is the way, the truth and the life eternal and not to be separated from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. To love God and my neighbor.

When it’s all over, what do you want your life to have been about? We each need to have an answer to that question, so that it will provide us with direction in the priorities we set for the rest of our lives however long or short they may be.