5 posts tagged “life”

This is a really meaningful post. The question of what life really means to you is worth answering, whether as a comment to Kimura or in your own head.

Life is... (enter your answer here)

http://kimurahq.vox.com/library/post/...

Last night I was texting with a friend of mine, and I wrote that I never was the kind who would say "Life is all about career advancement!" or "Life is all about working hard!". She replied by asking, "Well, what would you say your life is about?" A very good question. So it got me thinking. But...

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Milan Kundera

2 comments

If every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times, we are nailed to eternity as Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross. It is a terrifying prospect. In the world of eternal return the weight of unbearable responsibility lies heavy on every move we make. That is why Nietzsche called the idea of eternal return the heaviest of burdens (das schwerste Gewicht).
If eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can stand out against it in all their splendid lightness.
But is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid?
The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfilment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.
Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.

What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?

- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Today is Human Rights Day and the 60th anniversary of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. What human right do you value most? 

and the altogether inspiring: (check it out if only for the music!)

Don't miss the other featured videos related to this on YouTube. A fantastic, edifying series of 30 tiny ads by Youth For Human Rights.

People may say it a hundred times but you only really learn when you experience it yourself.

Today I found that something I'd been searching for for weeks -- metaphorically speaking -- has been right here under my nose all the time.

Maybe, just maybe, it could be true of other things as well, things I feel have been eluding me for years and lifetimes.