I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Thursday Thinker, I share a smart idea or theory.
Czech novelist Milan Kundera opens his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being with an introduction to Nietzsche’s theory of eternal return:
The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify?
Putting it negatively, the myth of eternal return states that a life which disappears once and for all, which does not return, is like a shadow, without weight, dead in advance, and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime, its horror, sublimity, and beauty mean nothing.
This is a burden, he explains:
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 (das schwerste Gewicht).
If eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can stand out against it in all their splendid lightness.
But heaviness isn’t always worse than lightness:
[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.
And Kundera asks, perhaps setting up the main question the novel’s characters seek to answer:
What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?
Making decisions and commitments
Having children brings a burden to one’s life. One cannot easily escape the responsibility and weight of parenting.
But for me, having had children is much better than having not had them. I don’t even know what the light life without them would be like. I just know it’s not a life that I would choose, given my knowledge of my life as a mother.
I live with my 23-year-old daughter right now as she launches her career in social work. During Covid, I had all three children with me, one in the workforce, one in college, one finishing high school. My ex-husband thought that my son, already working, shouldn’t be living at home. Fortunately he and I no longer shared a home, so I could make the decision without (much) complaint to have Charlie live with me.
It’s heavy to have an adult or almost-adult child live with you.
The choice to have a child is irreversible, and it reverberates into the eternity of your life.
Heavyweight art
I’m working on my first assemblage artwork, a three-dimensional sort of sculpture made of discarded objects, old books, wood, and wire.
I’ve reached the stage of gluing and screwing elements together. Yesterday I glued the bottom stack of books together using wood glue. Once I do something like that it’s difficult if not impossible to go back.
Each step forward has weight. Each step forward defines what can and cannot happen later.
None of these steps are as weighty as the decision to have a child, of course.
Something I love about making real physical art is the weightiness of it. My art has gotten progressively heavier. First I painted on paper. Then on Michael’s Super Value canvases made of lightweight fabric stretched on bars only 3/4″ deep. I found some “gallery wrapped” canvases at Blick on sale and bought them — canvas stretched on thicker (1.5″ – 2.5″) wood pieces, with staples hidden. The sides can be finished and no frame is necessary.
Now I usually paint on 1.5″ depth gallery wrapped Michael’s Level 3 canvases. My art has gotten bigger as I’ve developed my style. For a show I’m entering today, one of the pieces is 36″ x 36″. It’s heavy, and it required a lot of paint and commitment to get it done.
Heaviness or lightness?
I imagine most people, if you asked them, would choose a light and happy life versus a heavy, burdened, and potentially more meaningful one.
But that’s exactly what Nietzsche was arguing against with his theory of eternal return.
He thought we shouldn’t wish for everything to be easy and smooth. He thought that we should affirm life in all its fullness, including the suffering, grief, and pain that goes along with joy, delight, and peacefulness.
It’s relevant to whether I choose today to actually submit images of my paintings to that show I mentioned. I feel reluctant to do so. I know there’s a good possibility I’ll be rejected, and that will feel bad. If I get a piece accepted, then I’ll want to go to the art show opening, and socialize with a lot of people I don’t already know. That is anxiety-producing. It’s heavy.