Eternal Return

Dear ladies, you may recognize the title of this post as a main theme from the book The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, which we (or at least two of us) read in Grade 12 English.

Now Valerie before you start moaning and groaning about how weird of a book that was and you didn't understand it, please just hear me out.

I chose this title because I would like to return to another topic discussed with reference to the same book.

This is the debate of the mind vs. the body. Or if you like, the spiritual and the physical. And also the purpose/meaning of life.

See the funny thing about taking English is that themes keep popping up, as this one did in my English class recently.

We were reading the poems Sunday Morning and  The Idea of Order at Key West by Wallace Stevens.

Let’s begin with Key West, without going into too much detail it is basically about a man who hears a young woman singing to the ocean and he contemplates what makes life beautiful. The ocean after all is just a whole lot of water, but as the woman sang he saw it appear to change into a living thing which could communicate with humanity.

In Sunday Morning a young woman contemplates the meaning of her life, whether she needs the promise of a paradise or whether earth is enough for her. See, she likes the idea of beauty but can’t help but think that a never changing, always perfect paradise would be far less than what she has on earth.

The class of course got into a very enthusiastic discussion, points of which I wish to share with you.

What makes a thing beautiful or artistic or meaningful? These are ideas thrust upon the world by humanity, but they are ideas that we need. Without these ideas the world would be a stark place. Though we know it’s true, isn’t it kind of lonely to think of the stars as only far away fire balls in a bleak expanse? To think of the ocean only as a body of water? Now I don’t know about you, but I personally find the stars to be rather comforting, the ocean to be beautiful, and the world to have something more to it than only atoms.

Let us imagine something we like. Strawberries, for example. Juicy, sweet, sun ripened – for many the taste of summer. Now imagine in an ever perfect paradise having fresh strawberries ready for the picking all the time. 24/7, every single day of every single year. Now, delicious as they are – I might get sick of them. Or they would lose some of their significance, wouldn’t be as special.

It’s not often that the four of us are together, which makes the times we do spend together even better.

Perspective adds another layer to beauty. Without the threat of mortality, strawberries having but one short beautiful season a year, we have little reason to cherish the things we have.

I’m really not being morbid and thinking about death, I’m thinking about time passing, and lives changing, and seizing the day because you never know what tomorrow will bring. Life is a quest.

There are so many quotations I could end off with:

 “Memento Mori” is rather bleak, “Carpe Diem” is overdone. Even “No day but today” doesn’t really get my point across.

The quotation I’d like to leave you with is one of exploration and thought from Andre Gide.

“Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.”

Until next time,

Dawn :)