Recurrence

5thstory's picture

"Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?" (Hamlet)

I'm scared.
I don't know whether I should just keep on going with the flow, trying to swim through life with no pain or glory, or to fight back, against the current, and do something to change the way things are?
I should stay away from truisms.

What if there are no certainties in life? Then, I guess, I will need to tell myself lies to wake up every morning. It would be too depressive otherwise. But, isn't that what we do everyday? Telling ourselves a huge lie over and over again, telling ourselves that there are certainties and absolute truths in life, just to be able to wake up and live a life of lies. And if there do are certainties, what am I doing?

Milan Kundera said, in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, that we have to choose between weight and lightness. I can't express that better than he did, so let me quoth him:
"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. 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 fulfillment. 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?

The though of making a mistake -in choosing lightness or weight- is terrifying. What if this is a world of lightness, freedom, and we are living it too heavily? Could it be that taking life so seriously is my mistake, not letting me fully enjoy the experience, filling me up with worries, making me too careful?

Whatever happens, I just expect I find a solution for life, because I am starting to get tired of my fears, my so-called certainties, my doubts. What can I do to be better at living?

Comments

jeff's picture

Hmm..

You keep changing the questions and the approach, but I always think it's the same answer. You need to live your truth, then the rest falls into place. You live someone else's, then there is turmoil.

---
"Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment." - Rumi

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msquared's picture

Well

It's strange how the author related being stuck in cycles of suffering to Jesus; that idea is classic Buddhism! Christianity and Buddhism are a lot closer than people think, though. Anywho, I DO have a point. Just to give you my $0.02, Buddha kinda recommended a mixture of both lightness and heaviness. Balance, equilibrium, ying-yang...whatever you want to call it, it's important. When I'm on my game, my mind is light and above the suffering, so then I can view it objectively and not be irrational with my emotions. But my heart stays grounded and on the same level as the suffering of others so I can be compassionate. We bring ourselves a lot of pain by craving and clinging to things, and doing things for others kinda breaks that up.

But that's just my opinion. I'm hoping it'll help, yet what Jeff said is totally true--it's yo thang; do whatchya wanna do. You'll find a perspective you like eventually...promised.

"But don't be afraid to be a fool. Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it."
-Stephen Colbert