The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera

I’m a sucker for books and movies that give me a history lesson while telling me an interesting story. My father had been to undivided Czechoslavakia in his younger days and told me stories of life there. But I knew nothing about the Prague Spring or the subsequent invasion of the country by the Soviet Union. This book promised love and sex in the foreground. If you are going to teach me modern European history you better bring along a torrid love affair for the ride.

What I had not bargained for was an introduction to existentialism. I had seen the word “Nietzsche” before but had not heard anyone pronounce it. I don’t go to those cocktail parties.

But key themes from the book I cannot forget. Responses to knowing we have but one life to live can be opposites, and yet equally reasonable. It was an insight that has revealed something about human nature to me. What we choose to burden ourselves with and what choices set us free. Importantly, no one knows “how to live” life for we are all living it just this once.

Turns out the sex scenes in the book were ephemeral but played their part in making me read the book. Many years later I came across a quote that has been confusingly attributed to many famous people. I like it because it frames some of my meta-thinking these days.

The purpose of life is to find your gift, the meaning of life is to give it away.