There are light and heavy beings in life, how do we choose our own existence, whether to choose heavy or light? Choose heavy, down-to-earth, close to the earth; Choose light, float lightly like a feather, and approach the sky. Today we will read a work together, "The Unbearable Lightness of Life". The work was written by the Czech-French writer Milan Kundera and was first published in 1984. It is a philosophical novel that brings us into the thinking of "light and heavy" and "spirit and flesh".
There are four main characters in the book: Thomas, Teresa, Sabina, and Franz. They represent each of the four typologies of life's dilemma. Let's take a look at how they weigh the "light and heavy" and "spirit and flesh" in life.
Thomas is a superb surgeon with a sexually indulgent life, with multiple lovers, and in his view love and family responsibilities are his burdens. He decided to live a light and free life, so he decided to divorce his wife, never see his son, and dissociate himself from his parents. In order not to be bound by any woman, he adheres to the principle of only having sex with women, not falling in love with any woman, and not leaving women at home for the night. He finally pushed back all the responsibilities on his body until he met Teresa.
Teresa is a waitress whom Thomas met by chance, and the two fell in love at first sight. That night, the two had a relationship. On this night, Teresa has a serious cold, and Thomas develops sympathy for her and changes his principle of "not leaving women overnight". Thomas felt Teresa drifting to his bed like an abandoned baby. After that, they began to live together. After living together, Thomas still fooled around with many women, but Teresa always believed in the principle of "unity of spirit and flesh", which made Teresa miserable. Teresa is deeply in love with Thomas, and in order to alleviate Teresa's pain, Thomas decides to marry Teresa.
But his love affair with Teresa is not reciprocal. Although Thomas loved Teresa,he violated his own principles and fell in love with her for her; for her he gave up his glamorous profession and preferred to be a glass scrubber; for Teresa's sake no longer suffering, he decided to stay away from women and move to the countryside. However, Thomas's love for her was based on Teresa's absolute loyalty to him, and he himself believed in the theory of the separation of spirit and flesh, so he cheated unscrupulously. Teresa faced her husband's infidelity, and she had also experienced cheating, but such an approach made her feel even more miserable.
After getting married, Thomas was still unable to remain faithful. Sabina was one of his many lovers. Sabina chose the lightness of life. She chose betrayal and escape. Since there was a betrayal and escape, she has experienced the thrill of betrayal and escape, and betrayal and escape have become her lifelong pursuits. She betrayed her relatives, betrayed her spouse, betrayed her love, fled her homeland, and in the end she had nothing to betray and flee, only an empty, lonely and ethereal life.
Sabina soon had a new lover, a university professor named Franz. Franz and Sabina are two people who are completely different, and he chooses the weight of life. He was conditioned by heavy responsibilities, worldliness, morality, and dreams. Since knowing Sabina, he often felt uneasy about his wife, which was contrary to his moral standards of honesty, and he decided to divorce her and marry Sabina. Franz's decision weighed heavily on her, and she was unwilling to take responsibility for any feelings, so she fled the city overnight. Franz, in the end, decided to join the army of foreign wars, to serve the motherland, and to die for the country.
The four protagonists in this book, from their weighing of "spirit and flesh", we see that they are either light or heavy. They treat existence lightly, in order: Sabina is the lightest, then Thomas, then Teresa, and Franz is the heaviest.
From the title of the work, "The Unbearable Lightness of Life", we can see that the author chose the weight of life and the weight of existence. Everyone has everyone's life dilemma, how do you weigh the "light and heavy" and "spirit and flesh"?