The Unbearable Lightness of Being
In describing the effect his idea of "lightness" has on a person's life, Kundera says Einmal ist keinmal ("what happens but once, might as well not have happened at all,. If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all"). By this logic life is, ultimately, insignificant; in an ultimate sense, no single decision matters. Since decisions do not matter, they are light - that is, they don't cause us suffering. Yet simultaneously, the insignificance of our decisions — our lives, our being — causes us great suffering. Hence the phenomenon Kundera terms the unbearable lightness of being: because life occurs only once and never returns, no one's actions have any universal significance. This idea is deemed unbearable because as humans, we want our lives to mean something, for their importance to extend beyond just our immediate surroundings.
Milan Kundera
Milan Kundera is a writer whom to me pose's many potent questions within his pregnant narratives, delicously bleak landscapes twist and turn from the czech history books, a history rich in revolution and triumph yet blighted with catastrophic defeat and surrender. The Prague he so colourfully describes is today but a shell of its former self, a land cursed by the spoilers, Easyjet and its gaggle of Hens and Stags.
Personal favorites of mine, Life is Elsewhere and Immortality are good ones to start with, but for the love of god dont watch the movie Unbearable Lightness Of Being before reading the book.
Enjoy
AGENT B
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