This book (by Milan Kundera) was not as I expected to be, and it far surpasses any expectations I had for it. It is brilliant! It is a story about a woman, her womanizing husband, his mistress, and the mistress's lover, about how their lives are connected, about choices and chance, about the one chance to live, and about the substance of existence. (I love thought provoking books and it makes me look sadly at all the time I have wasted reading "brain candy" empty, pointless books.)chapter two, begins...
"If every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times, we are nailed to eternity as Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross. It is a terrifying prospect. In the world of eternal return, the weight of unbearable responsibility lies heavy on every move we make. That is why Nietzsche called the idea of heavy return the heaviest of burdens (das schwerste Gewicht).
If eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can stand out against it in all their splendid lightness.
But is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid?
The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.
Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.
What shall we chose? Weight or lightness?"
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