by Sean M Kelly…

“This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not be false to any man.”  William Shakespeare

I sat alone having my breakfast at my mother’s, and turned on the television. There was a group of academics discussing a story by Tolstoy entitled, The Death of Ivan Ilych. I had never heard of it before. It tells the story of a man, Ivan, who, during his life succumbs to the ‘hypnosis of social conditioning’ and lives a life that everyone else expects him to live. As his life is coming to an end with terminal illness he begins to question how he has lived. He asks himself, ‘What if in reality my whole life has been wrong?’. He wonders if he was ever true to himself. The only time he remembers being true was when he was a child. Read More→