On these rainy days, I’m reading two books. They’re shaping me in surprising ways. They also express feelings I already have.
One of them is Anna Karenina.
I see a clear reflection of myself in Levin.
Konstantin Dmitrich Levin is a landowner. He spends much of the novel in an existential crisis. He could live off his wealth or take an important role in Moscow. He chooses neither. That life feels wrong to him.
He rejects the modern world. He keeps asking the same question: what is the point of living?
Levin represents a quiet kind of vitalism. His wisdom does not come from ideas or debates. It comes from physical work. During harvest season, when he joins the peasants in the fields, he finds peace. While working, he stops thinking. He stops searching for answers because he no longer needs them.
The other book I am reading is Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Tolstoy and Nietzsche were contemporaries. They likely never read each other. They both shared something important: a strong rejection of rational modern life. They preferred a life guided by the body, not the mind.
But they looked in opposite directions.
Nietzsche looked upward, toward the overman, toward the creation of new values. Toward saying yes to life in all its cruelty and beauty. His vitalism was aristocratic, heroic, and vertical.
Levin gazed down at the land. He sought humility and aimed to dissolve his ego through work and family. His vitalism was rural, horizontal, and grounded.
Yet both say the same thing in different ways.
You can only live through action, never through pure thought. You do not need permission. You do not need justification. What you live is who you are; nothing more.
The modern trap
Modern culture twists this message.
It suggests that being authentic means knowing yourself. It treats you like a fixed object, as if you don’t change over time.
That is the trap.
Because if you are always evolving, there is always more work to do. Always another layer to dig into. And as Byung-Chul Han puts it:
Today, everyone is an auto-exploiting laborer in his or her own enterprise. People are now masters and slaves in one. Even class struggle has transformed into an inner struggle against oneself.
You exploit yourself because it is never enough; because you are never ready.
Kierkegaard saw this coming in the nineteenth century. He called it despair: infinite reflection that paralyzes you.
His answer was not more analysis; it was the opposite: the leap of faith.
You commit to a way of living, to a decision. You stop weighing options without considering logic. You jump without a safety net. You suspend judgment and move forward.
Between Nietzsche and Levin
Real vitalism, for me, lies between Nietzsche and Levin.
Nietzsche tells you to stop feeling like a victim. Don’t blame your circumstances. Instead, act according to your desires.
Levin encourages you to stay humble. Know your limits, appreciate small things, and live simply.
In chaotic times, focusing on living feels right. Concentrate on what you can control. Take that leap of faith. Let life flow again.
No rush. No self-exploitation. Just movement.
Life doesn’t wait. Through action, you become who you are.
Everything else is just suffering.
