Unbearable Lightness of Being

You can only step into the same river once. Life moves relentlessly downstream like a river, so we never have a chance to experience the same situation twice.

Because we can never do the same thing two times, we don't know if our current decision is the best possible option for the future, because we cannot compare our life to any other outcome.

We make decisions based on limited knowledge and depend on emotions more than our intelligence. Whether we like to admit it or not, we tend to trust our instincts which are deeper than our intellect.

We also rely on heuristics to judge the world and make decisions. For example, we naturally believe that tall men with nice cars, big houses, and pretty wives are honest, trustworthy and competent.

But what if our instincts and heuristics are wrong, and we trust a tall man who harms us? Were we wrong to trust our intuitive and emotional understanding of the world? How else are we to make decisions?

In his book, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, author Milan Kundera introduces us to a character he had been thinking about for many years. As Kundera thought about Tomas, he often saw him standing at a window and thinking about a woman named Tereza.

Tereza rode into town on a train one day, much like a basket floats down a river. Tomas randomly met Tereza at the train station and hooked up with her for a week before she left his apartment and returned to her small village outside the city.

Tomas wondered if he should invite her back to Prague for good. He knew any decision he made about Tereza would impact both himself and his future lover.

Tomas feared the responsibility of a long-term relationship. If he invited her back to Prague, then she would live with him. On the other hand, if he did not call her, then she would remain a waitress at a restaurant in a small town, and he would never see her again. Did he want to live with her or did he not?

Tomas was shocked that he felt love for Tereza. She was a complete stranger. She seemed like a child to him, a child "someone had put in a bulrush basket daubed with pitch and sent downstream for Tomas to fetch at the riverbank of his bed".

Milan Kundera compares the arrival of Tereza into Tomas' life with the biblical story of young Moses being placed in a bulrush basket and sent downstream by his mother in the Nile River.

Kundera used the biblical story to illustrate the random nature of relationships and situations in life. If life is merely a series of chance encounters, then how do we know what decisions to make?

Tomas struggles with that question throughout his life. He asks himself,

"Was it better to be with Tereza or to remain alone? There is no way to test which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?"

Kundera takes us on a journey of decisions Tomas makes with Tereza and other women in his life during the Prague Spring, which was an uprising against Soviet rule in Czechoslovakia in 1968.

The Soviets brutally crushed the uprising and imprisoned or killed many of its participants. Some people escaped into exile, while others submitted to the regime in humiliation and were forced out of their careers.

Into this historical and intimate narrative, Kundera weaves together ideas from Greek thinkers and Czech intellectuals, which makes the novel intellectually challenging as well as emotionally moving.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being was written by Kundera in 1984, just five years before his friend and fellow Czech writer Vaclav Havel became president of his country.

While Kundera chose to live in exile as a writer, Havel stayed in Czechoslovakia and suffered for his willingness to express himself. Havel was a leader of the Velvet Revolution that helped overthrow the Soviet regime within Eastern Europe in 1989.

The backdrop of the novel is the Cold War during the years following the Prague Spring, but the content and themes are universal and timeless.

In the story, love for his country was important, but what gave Tomas a sense of mission and meaning in life was his work as a surgeon. Kundera treated the career of Tomas much like the Prague Spring. It was in the background, and it was important, but it was secondary to his tortured search for fulfillment with the women he feared to love.

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Soviet tanks in Wenceslas Square - Prague 1968