Hello! My name's Henry and I enjoy lightness.

This blog has its roots in a long train trip, during which I was reading a book leant to me by my friend Harj, which had been given to him by my friend Rohit. Both of them were on the train with me at the time. The book was called The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. I enjoyed the first chapter. I didn’t understand it, which made me feel it was beyond my intellectual capacity and must therefore have been deeply profound and interesting.

                                                                                

                                                       

                                                                     The Unbearable Lightness

                                                                     Of Being. This actually 

                                                                     looks nothing like the 

                                                                     version I read.

I also enjoyed it because it was only two pages long, which gave me a feeling of immense gratification, as I could say after only ten minutes, ‘Yes! First chapter down already!’

This is a very bad way to approach books, as you should read them because you enjoy reading them, not finishing them. This made me feel disappointed in myself, which may have been crucial to the mood I took with me to the second chapter.

But first, I read the first chapter about five more times, until I either understood it or felt I understood it.

I didn’t enjoy the second chapter. I will go further into why another day, but in short, it seemed to try to polarise our perception of the world into either light or heavy, and then ask us to choose:

                        ‘What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?’

I didn’t like this, and I told Rohit. ‘I don’t like the way he tries to divide everything into lightness and weight. Nothing’s ever ‘absolute’ [a word he used to describe his point on page 5], and I don’t think either should have to be unbearable anyway.’

                                                                                           Rohit.

This was a mistake. I should never have judged the book so early. I was less than six of 314 pages in, and in articulating what I thought, I locked my brain in a concrete box of negativity. No matter how hard I tried, opening my mouth about it meant that I couldn’t get away from the idea of that first impression.

So I finished the train trip and eventually went home. While I was away I had all these ideas about what I would do when I got back. I would play more music, do more exercise, read more books and pay more attention to the news. So far none of this has happened, so I still feel I need a hobby until uni goes back. Today, I noticed the book on my shelf (I still haven’t given it back to Harj. Sorry Harj.) and was filled with hatred. I think it’s been playing around in the back of my mind for about a month now, but I only realised it just then. So I rudely and spontaneously jumped on facebook to attack Milan Kundera via Rohit’s page. Then I realised I needed to justify it, and quaked at the thought. How could I commit to something so time-consuming?

                                                    

                                                                                            Harj. 

Then I decided I could start a blog about it. I can limit each post to 300-400 words and only write it when I feel like it. This way it won’t take up too much time, and I can spend a day or so thinking about things before committing to them.

It is unlikely to last long. I will probably stop soon due to sadness from the abuse I’m likely to cop from hipsters and intellectuals who like Milan Kundera and have thought about his book for longer than I have. It is also probable that I’ll be proven wrong every time I post, which will also be sad for me and my way of life. So I’m unlikely to exhaust the full list of reasons why I don’t like this book. I have an abortive approach to most things.

                                                                                          Milan Kundera

If you read this blog, you need to understand that while I love ‘the truth’ as an ideal, I don’t believe it can be stated. This is partly because words can’t actually replicate events or beliefs in their entirety (they never have enough time) and mainly because everybody perceives the truth differently. But for something to be true, it needs to be correct regardless of how you see it. This is not my idea, somebody else came up with it. I can’t remember who. I think, probably, a lot of people would claim to have come up with it. John Yossarian would probably call it a ‘Catch-22’. So when I say something, it has nothing more behind it than thought or belief. But to start every sentence with ‘I believe’ or ‘I think’ would soon eat my 400-word limit. The repetition would be unbearable.

The first post will be launched tomorrow.