Life's Rehearsals

I'm reading this fantastic book, recommended to my by Savannah, and it's called The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.

I'm completely engrossed in it, fascinated by the crisp language that Kundera uses to describe mundane reality. He puts things so well, so precise to how life is. I hope that this is not my only blog on his writing. His writing inspires me to want to write someday, yet it makes me feel inadequate, as if I could not produce something as spectacular and meaningful as he does. Perhaps if you read only a chapter of his writing, just a paragraph or two, you'll know what I mean.

Below, I've selected a paragraph that I've read over and over, reviewing its words. How often have we had this thought? But he puts it in perfect language that we understand, helps us make sense of our world.

Kundera writes, "We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always a sketch. No, 'sketch' is not quite the word, because a sketch is an outline that is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture."

But isn't that the beauty of life? What would we learn if we did not make mistakes or fall from our actions? Not everything in life can be thoroughly planned or designed, and that gives the thrill and excitement to it. What is life without the random encounters, the spontaneity?