Lightness & Weight
You are sitting in your bed, enveloped in a universe of sheets - waves of guilt, comfort, and pleasure. You do so, indulging in distractions to build up tall, stone walls of denial. Stone by stone, you construct your barrier of defence - your shield against the obliterating, painstaking pierce of the dagger, the dagger that is our purpose.
We persist in a universe where the meaning of life is a mystery. We had no choice coming into it, and we are unaware of when it will all be taken away. Our existence essentially, is lightness. The lightness of helium in a bright, red balloon, soaring higher into the clouds until it simply bursts. We all seek meaning and value in our lives, subconsciously in search of a way to feel significant. In this world of 7.4 billion human beings, we hunt for weight.
Milan Kundera confronts you with an epiphany. “And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?”, he contemplates with wisdom and rhetoric. Our lives have no basis for comparison. We persist, as meaningful as a speck of dust on the floor, a droplet of rain on a windshield, oblivious to why we are here.
This brings us back to distraction. Our lack of meaning can lead to melancholy, confounded thoughts and no motive. To escape this, we allow the tide of our cold sheets to push us back to the shore of reality, where critical thinking and existential metacognition cease to exist. We let our distraction become our purpose.
My distraction? Idealism and the future. Due to my constant dissatisfaction with the present, I tell myself things will be better in the future. Apart from trying to build that future, I dedicatedly watch shows and vlogs of other people’s lives on the Internet, putting myself in their shoes. One day, I can be successful, too. One day, I will be happy, too. One day, I will be loved like that, too. This is my safe haven, my stone walls of denial, propagating that purpose? It is simply an idealistic kitsch that the world worships like an innovative art display in a gallery, where spectators are left confused at whether they absolutely love or hate it.
Your purpose is to “be a rich, handsome CEO of a Fortune 500 company”? Or is it to get good grades so you can build a life for yourself? Or maybe it is just to find true love and be with someone for the rest of your life. Regardless, it is laughable. Living with so much weight and meaning ruins the vague, exciting river of life. Live with lightness. Do not obsess. Do not worry. Live with a beat in your step, a sparkle in your eyes and with an unexpectedness for what is to come. Life should not have a meaning. Life should just be.
Inspired by Milan Kundera’s, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”.
