How to live a life? It seems there are two ways at the outset, these two ways are linked to two different perspectives on time. I see this as the telling of the novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. The novel sets out a matrix of four characters suspended between two modes of existence and two conceptions of time: a life of lightness and a life of heaviness, set against two contrasting views of time's nature – recurring or linear time. In the very beginning, the novel sets out a philosophical foreground from the ideas of Nietzsche and Parmenides, through which Kundera crafts a rich intellectual matrix of characters that invites readers to contemplate the human condition.
The perspectives on time
The two perspectives on time are mutually exclusive ideas, if you see things and happenings repeating in the world and your life, if you believe that what has happened will reoccur in some other way, if you face the same set of choices again and again in your life, you are of the view that time is recurring. Every moment is a different manifestation of eternal time. People who are given to this idea of eternal time have to deal with the eternal consequences of their decisions and choices because they will be repeated endlessly in their lives. If the outcomes are happier, then they will be longing for such happiness and subsequently encountering those happy moments in their life again and again. But what if the outcomes of their actions are other than happiness? Thus, in a world of eternal time, every decision and move counts. This idea of time forces an immense sense of accountability for every action of ours, because nothing in our life is transient, our decisions and actions bear heavy on life.
This discussion is associated with the idea of time by Nietzsche. Nietzsche proposes the concept of eternal recurrence, a thought experiment suggesting that life and all its events repeat infinitely in an eternal cycle. Nietzsche presents this notion as an attempt to confront the apparent meaninglessness of life and provide a framework for creating significance.
In such a universe, we face the same choices repeatedly as time recurs, and each decision gains infinite weight because it is eternal. The awareness that every moment will recur compels us to deliberate carefully and live authentically, knowing that our actions echo infinitely. Through this lens, every moment becomes profoundly significant, challenging us to embrace life with full acceptance and affirm its totality, including its joys and sufferings.
Otherwise, if you see that the happenings in your life and the world around you, as unique every time, if you believe that an opportunity presents itself once in a lifetime, then you are of the belief that time is linear. Every moment is new and old ones do not reoccur. Thus, one is not posed to face a bygone moment again in their life. Life moves in a straight line and does not turn back. There won’t be any recurring consequences of our actions. As the ghosts of our past actions are not going to visit us in a linear time, the individual can forget the past and move on, life can be as light as it can be.
But which of these two ideas of time is true, the repeating eternal time or the straight linear time? To answer this question, Milan Kundera takes up another proposition by another philosopher and thus provides his novel with rich intellectual material to read and deliberate.
Positives and negatives
The other intersecting strand of the novel’s matrix is the idea of positives and negatives derived from the ideas of Parmenides. The ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides broadly conceptualized the world as a distinction between existence and non-existence. He tries to bring out the truth of beings. His philosophy discusses things that are true and real, they are the beings which can be understood as the positives and the absence of the truth and reality makes something a non-being – those that do not exist and such things are to be understood as the negatives. And as he classifies the various entities of life and the world into this dichotomy, those that have the attribute of heaviness are categorised as negative and those that have the attribute of lightness are positive.
Now, drawings from these two philosophers – Nietzsche and Parmenides – suggest that a life that encounters eternal time will be heavy because of the pressing weight the recurring time will have on the choices and actions of the person. And such heaviness implies negativity and a linear time in which the actions and choices do not have an everlasting bearing on oneself is light. Such lightness is positive.
But Milan Kundera in the novel poses the question – of whether heaviness deserves disapproval and on the other hand is lightness always good. Thus, he explores the lightness and heaviness of life in his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being with his prowess in literary pursuit and brilliance in intellectual exercise.
In order not to reveal the plot fully and to save the pleasure of reading the novel for the future reader, let me just outline the crux of the novel. Kundera develops four characters in the novel, two of each live a life of lightness and heaviness respectively. The contrast is that each of them is set to live with the other. A character that sees meaning and connection in things happening around her is posed to live with a character that sees such happenings as mere coincidences. Among these two, one is heavily pinned to domestic life and the other is just the opposite of that, yet both are tethered to each other. In the other set of characters, one sets herself free from every relationship yet the other wants to attach himself to her despite wanting to maintain his every other relationship.
The ‘meaning’ of life
Kundera spins their lives in order to bring out the supposed meaning of life in terms of heaviness and lightness. The novel brings out the irony of the meaning of life in these characters as they show ambivalence in their life choices, despite subscribing to the ideas of eternal time/linear time on one hand and the life of connectedness/laissez-faire on the other. The combination of eternal time and connectedness leads to a life full of sincere choices and meaningful connections and it is thus heavy. On the other hand, the combination of linear time and taking life as it happens leads to the lightness of life. On the outset, lightness (of life) is preferred, but Kundera questions such a presumption, diligently in the novel.
In the midst of the novel a character that serves all of its “weary” relationships reflects on its internal struggle and disillusionment with her own sense of freedom. The character feels the more it is unchained from the others and feels light, the liberation – lightness itself is felt as a heaviness. If all the choices in life are inconsequential, will life have any meaning? This very freedom also leads the character to experience a sense of boredom – emptiness, alienation, and a lack of fulfilment, which is where the “heaviness of lightness” comes into play. Thus, Kundera asserts in the novel among many other things, that a life bereft of any attachments and thus light is in fact very heavy to live.
In the discourse of the novel Kundera digresses on the various other ideas and issues that include whether we know what we want, the idea that decisions are trusted upon us, that life is not an experiment, and interestingly includes a sort of Short Dictionary of Misunderstood Words beautifully intervening within the narrative.
In my reading, the novel, in one way, raises the existential question and answers it delicately in asserting that though life may not have a grand mission, it is made up of relationships and connections to make out any meaning in it. The delight as well as the heaviness of reading the novel sets in the mind of the reader as we progress through the novel and much after that.
R Sivakumar is an Assistant Professor of Business Management at The New College, Chennai.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera, translated from the Czech by Michael Henry Heim, Faber and Faber.
