Promised a friend that I’d send her the excerpt from ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’ which incidentally, another dear friend had sent me some time back. Well here it is.. no links, no lj-cuts..
‘He remained annoyed with himself until he realised that not knowing what he wanted was actually quite natural.
We can never know what to want , because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our life to come.
Was it better to be with Treza or to remain alone?
There is no means of testing 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? That is why life is always like a sketch. No, “sketch” is not quite the word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture.
Einmal ist keinmal, says Tomas to himself. What happens but once, says the German adage, might as well not have happenened at all. If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all.’
Well, that is that.
deelight says:
Nice! I must read this book sometime
March 17, 2004 — 11:06 pm
Anonymous says:
bang on…
Ekdum barobar boleli kya tu… I remember being impressed by this part of the book.. thought it was quite a cool concept though I didn’t quite agree with the last part… comes close to the Hindu concept of karmanye vadikaar…
to begin with it can be an unnerving thought to know that you will never know the full impact of your decisions… but then on second thoughts, it makes you free… you don’t have to worry too much about how it will turn out coz’ all you have is the here and now and you take your decision based on that… bindaas rehne ka kya!!!
reading this part makes me want to re-read the book again though not all of it was great reading if I remember right…
ciao…
ash…
March 18, 2004 — 12:57 am
Lakshmi says:
Re: bang on…
Haven’t read it myself yet… That’s the next on my list.
March 18, 2004 — 5:15 am
nachiketj says:
Read it
Personal favorite
March 18, 2004 — 8:29 am
Anonymous says:
The book is not that great as I expected…ofcourse, am not even halfway thru it…maybe I expected too much after having read that one para…but I guess its worth checking out..
Would recommend you to read ‘Testaments Betrayed’ by the same author…really worth a read !!
Geetu..
March 18, 2004 — 9:11 am
Lakshmi says:
The film stars Daniel Day-Lewis and some other actors. Must get to watching it sometime…
March 19, 2004 — 4:46 am