Conflict

Today I basically accepted a job I don't really want so I "celebrated" that by at least seeing a movie I really wanted to see.  The movie was The Last Station with Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer.  Plummer plays an aged and dying Leo Tolstoy (born Lev Nikolayevich) and Mirren plays his wife Sofya.  I enjoyed the movie.

The Last Station is a love story and a history lesson.  (I'll be doing some googling to learn what was real and what simply made for a good movie.)  I did learn that a group called the Tolstoyans were - and apparently still are in some places - followers of Tolstoy's philosophies of peaceful resistance, sexual purity, and community property, to name a few.  Ironically, it seemed that Tolstoy's most ardent supporter and founder of the Tolstoyans, Vladimir Chertkov, was more fervent about Tolstoy's philosophies than Tolstoy himself was.

 Left: Vladimir Chertkov, Right: Leo Tolstoy

One of Plummer's (therefore Tolstoy's) lines that struck me in the movie was that he was (paraphrasing) "repulsed by their privilege" and how his wife seemed to enjoy it.  This made me feel repulsion over my attitude toward my decision to take a job that will give me privileges that others during this time would gladly embrace - a good salary, benefits, and a ridiculous amount of paid time off. 

Ah, the conflict.  How appropriate considering I just saw a movie about a man whose famous book title is about the greatest conflict of all - War and Peace.