(For the enthusiasts, turn on the following concert
video, especially from 37.30 to 42.00)
Did it happen to you before that someone recommended an album, a book, or an artist, but for some reason you didn't care much about it; however, a month, year, decade after somehow you discovered that it's a true masterpiece? Well,
The Unbearable Lightness of Being from Franco-Czech novelist
Milan Kundera was a birthday present I got a year ago. After 30 pages I dropped it, I didn't find it interesting. Maybe it was my internship at the tabloid
Blikk, or the book about
Al-Jazeera that I had to read for my thesis made me so indifferent, but whatever the reason was, I put in a box, and it remained untouched for a year.
It stayed there until last week when I visited my mom and brothers who finally returned from England for a few weeks. Our house in Szentendre will be occupied by some friends so I had to pack my stuff and empty my old room completely. Roaming through the mess, I stumbled upon (yes I love that expression)
the book. Being embarassed that I didn't read anything for a month, and still being regretful that I threw my birthday present so deep down, I picked it out, and started reading it.
It sucked me in. Irresistibly.
What made it perfect from the first second is the main motif, the continous presence and duel of fate and coincidence. Tereza, who
had to be sent down on the river in a balrush basket just as it happened with Moses makes it pretty sure we are all destinned in our lives. Soon enough Kundera starts debating when he states Tomas needed six coincidences to meet Tereza, who was meant to be his. As the plot goes on, we see the characters suffering and/ or depending on chance and fate as well, until the very last moment when the following conversation takes place between Tomas and Tereza:
'Haven't you noticed I've been happy here, Tereza? ' Tomas said.
'Surgery was your mission.' she said.
'Missions are stupid, Tereza. I have no mission. No one has.
And it's a terrific relief to realize you're free, free of all missions.'
Amongst all the truth he wrote, probably the one above is the quote that withstands time and keep its meaning to the coming generations. How unbearably hard to realize that we are not ought to do anything! That we are not obliged to find a mission. We do whatever we want to do in our lives, and finding a profession or mission should be just a part of it; see the great example of
Pyotr I. Tchaikovsky, Russian composer who was educated to become a civil servant, and settled down with music only around his forties (note that learning music in Russia in his life was almost impossible).
The idea of complete aimlessness is troubling indeed. We are obliged to study, to work something for a lifetime; nobody asks us to fight for something until the end of our lives. Who should demand it anyways? If I become a teacher, and die as one, would it be my mission? Hardly. I chose it as a possible way out of thousands of other choices; I devoted myself to educate, to raise the youngsters, to make sure their head is filled with valuable knowledge. Would it be a mission? Never. No one appointed me to do it, to achieve anything in it; I felt like doing it fits my personality, my demands about my own life.
Let me bring another example, which I was thinking while reading already.
Jonas, whom I became good friends during his stay in Eger, is learning to be a professional guitar player. Truth be told he is already one, on the way to become one of the greatests (that's the opinion of a laic though). Once he told me 'But you know it kinda sucks I have to do this. I have no other choice because I devoted myself to it. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I could start it over; I'd choose football or anything
(cooking I suppose). But I can't, no way I can quit now.' The mission he chose himself is envied by many (including myself). So how big the shock was when I heard him saying he is wondering what'd he do if he could start it over! I never dreamt anything but to find my mission; this guy has it, and imagines what if he could restart. And right after it, Kundera says there is no mission to find.
Lingering on these troubling thoughts, my dad came home yesterday from his walk and invited me for a glass of wine. Stargazing, I brought up the book and the idea of missions. He doesn't particularly likes Kundera ('
The Joke is great and his writings are entertaining, but after some time it smells like a forced intellectual dissertation. He doesn't have topic, he just pushes his wisdom and sentences through until they team up to a shallow motif') but my topic definetely made him talk a lot.
We were talking about what did we regret in our past. I couldn't line up many things, and if I found anything, I said 'if I'm not making the wrong choice, this and that wouldn't have happened. So eventually the bad decisions turned out to be good'. But he snubbed me saying: 'That is bullshit. The wrong choice you made left you in a stupid situation, and even if you came out into a good one, you had a bad experience. You are making a mistake by thinking about the only varying one line of fate. But what if you make the good choice in time? You'd find happiness sooner probably.'
How true it is! When we make a bad decision, we try to sooth ourselves that eventually (after a month, or a year) we will come out of it with a positive balance. Stupid and coward we are, ignoring the possibility of making the right decision instead of mistaking, we just try to save ourselves.
As we see now, finding our mission is never obligatory, but making the good decisions is supreme to everything else. As we never know what happens with the "what if"-s (as Tereza would never know what would have happened if they stay in Zürich instead of moving back to the communist occupied Prague), the best (and only) thing we can do is to make the right decision. To apply for a job or to university, to quit it and start writing our own book, to start travelling, to learn to play the guitar, to learn a new language, to love, to cheat, to hate, to marry, to divorce, to give birth, to be a
kitch, or to shit on the street; anything and everything is in our power. But under the weight of the lightness of our lives we just tremble, complain, suffer, crawl ahead, not admitting that standing up and walking with pride is ridiculously easy.
We will never know which of the four characters (I missed out talking about Sabina and Franz though) stood up eventually. When Franz dies, Kundera gives the slap in the face: when we already start to believe in the unbearable lightness of being, we got a punch by the unbelievable fragility of life.
Despite all the dark and grim events, book never lifted me so high, opened my eyes, blew through the swamp of my brain like a hurricane. Anyone who wants his grey matter working should read it, and at the end may find out why Karenin is the truest of all characters.
