You only get one shot.
At the time I was just about to hit kind of a rock- bottom in my life. I found the book on Tuesday evening and on Wednsesday I got senselessly drunk by myself and woke up the next day to a sad realization that my collarbone is broken.
As I had a lot of free time on my hands (in between of struggling to get dressed with a useless left arm and finding ways to cook a dinner for myself, by myself) I began showing interest in the book by Kundera. In the meantime a good friend of mine gave me a different book as a gift, Hemingway's 'Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises' and I jumped into that one first.
When I was finally ready, I reached out to my gem found on the street at night.
I've been busy with it for a while, since I had a lot of issues to deal with back then. But now that I finished the book, I can say with full confidence that 'The Unbereable Lightness of Being' is so far one of the most important books of my life (there will be many more to come though, I know).
Not only does it speak openly about human nature in terms of sexuality (which I always appreciate!), it tells how easily we get drawn to coincidences and fortuities.
It speaks from the position of both, man and a woman. The same story, different perspectives. Same problems, different solutions. Same mistakes, different lessons.
Why do I consider it to be such an important book? Because it is honest and well thought through from all possible angles.
One of the most important things that are said in the book is that it is absolutely normal to make mistakes. Why? Oh well, because you only get one shot!
When making a decision, you have to choose between A and B (very often also C,D, E..etc) and this choice will be either good or bad. You can't know what is it going to be until you go for it! Even if you think to yourself 'Yes, I am making the right decision here', while it can be very obvious to think so it does not necessarily have to be the truth. But still, a decision has to be made and whatever it will be, you are going to have to deal with its consequences.
It is a new concept to me as I've always been told to 'choose wisely'.
We all know it is not always possible. It may be the smart way but when impulses hit you, sometimes you listen to them instead of a lifetime experience of your own or others.
You get one chance, that's what you tell yourself. You depend on it quite significantly and then when it turns out you've made a mistake- you begin to beat yourself up.
One of the most wonderful female writers, Elizabeth Gilbert pointed out in her recent book 'Big Magic' that we are being constantly paralyzed by fear of failing, we only want to choose right. We want it everytime. Now, let's not be so hard on ourselves. If you won't make mistakes, how are you going to learn?
I am the one who would oppose the above argument by whining 'yes, but I've already made so many mistakes that I'm tired of it..'. I would but I won't anymore. Why when looking at others making mistakes I think it's fine because they are going through a hard time, they are out of job, unhappy etc. but I never allow myself to think that way of myself? That could probably be the pressure my mom was putting on me for 21 years of my life and I am still learning how to live without her judgements. If I would say 'but Marta did the same!', my mom would tell me 'yes, but you are not Marta!'. Damn you, Marta. You were lucky your mother didn't tell you what mine planted in me.
Even if I do something stupid I learn from that for the future. That said, now I know that I can't drink a bottle of wine and a bottle of whisky after not eating for the whole day. I've learned it the hard way but it's better than no way.
Another very interesting aspect of the book is, like I've mentioned at the beginning, admitting that we, human beings, the 'smartest' creatures on this planet, that we fall for the same things over and over. Coincidences! Don't you just love them? You are having this big dilemma about the guy or a a girl you've just met. Should you get involved or not? You're walking around the city, looking into the faces of strangers, you enter the bakery and there it is! Loud and clear! The song that was playing when you met him/her is playing right now on the radio while you're buying a sponge cake!
That must be it. 'Es muss sein'!
How silly it is of us to base our decisions on just one song, only because we figure that timing is right. But we do that, and we do that because we think that it is the voice of destiny calling us from afar. If on top of that you are a helpless romantic- well, you're screwed, so to say.
It only takes so little to, for example, fall in love.
Other important issues presented in 'The Unbereable Lightness of Being' are love, love making and relationships. We have Tomas who is cheating on his wife throughout his whole life, although he claims to love her deep down inside. We have Tereza, his wife, who is fully aware of her husband seeing many mistresses but she chooses to stay with him for the good and the bad despite his infidelities. We also have all those mistresses who don't seem to be bothered by Tomas being married.
This exactly is the whole concept of 'love' being something completely different than 'love-making'.
According to Tomas it is possible to make love to many women but to love only one. I would say he's disgusting if I only wasn't aware of his wife knowing he's cheating.
Love in the book is something greater while love making is purely physical and can have many purposes, other than just pleasure.
I do however think that if there is love between two people the only love- making should take place between the two of them. If that's not the case why bother and give it the name of a relationship?
We can be as polygamistic as we want (and many of us secretely want to push it to the limits to see how far can we go) but then, why also have a steady partner? That just doesn't make sense to me.
I know what is it like to close your eyes to inconvenient events. It is so easy when you think you love someone. But it took away my right to be angry when I found out (until then it was a strong suspicion only) that my boyfriend has been cheating on me. Only thing I could do was swallow my pride and admit to myself that I knew it all along so now I can't make a drama out of it.
I wish I was able to react like women in movies do. Go grab a bunch of plates (remember Connie Corleone in the first part of Godfather?) and smash them against the kitchen wall, slap him in the face, throw his painting out the window, but no. I couldn't do that. I was just as guilty as he was. I knew but I decided to keep quiet in order to have a happy relationship.
Instead of that we broke up after staying with each other for way too long. No one was happy there anymore and no one was entitled to outbursts of anger either. But naturally anger was very present.
'The Unbereable Lightness of Being' shows how easy it is to drift away from reality following 'signs', paying attention to coincidences too much and falling into routines. It somehow indicates that we can make awful mistakes in the name of love. But all we can do is to try and learn from those mistakes.
Maybe we still won't know what is it that we want or look for in a relationship but we will most certainly know what we don't want. It might happen that we will choose 'wrongly' again, but then, from the very beginning we will be aware of the mistake and will not let it grow.
It tells stories of people who decided to neglect importance of certain issues until the point where they became slaves of their thoughts, needs, routines or addictions. If you take something holy and turn it into ordinary, at first it will feel good, but after a while it will become a burden, an unbereable burden of important issues losing their importance in the name of lightness.
From other news- David Bowie passed away and although I am not familiar with all of his work, I do consider him to be one of the most influential artists of recent times.
Last Thursday a friend of mine asked me did I already hear the new song by Bowie, 'Lazarus'. Although I've seen something on my news feed about it, I still wasn't familiar with it. So I googled it as quickly as possible and- I mean, you've heard it by now, right?!- it made a huge impression on me. Such honesty, such self criticism and all of that build around beautiful melody and lyrics. Those horns, indeed! Very sad and dark in the most beautiful way.
Same friend left my apartment on Monday morning. As soon as he only walked out the door I came across the awful news.
Bowie has passed away the very same day.
I immediately texted my friend about it who (just as saddened as I) in response wrote that now, 'Lazarus' sounds very different. I sat down to listen to it once again.
When I did, shivers run down my spine as the song begins with:
'Look up here, I'm in heaven..'
Rock on among the stars, Ziggy, rock on!
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