The unbearable lightness of being
Milan Kundera

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 all burdens. If eternal return is the heaviest of all burdens, then our lives can stand out against it in all their splendid lightness. But is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid? (...)

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?

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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 lives to come. (...)

If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all

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