The unbearable lightness of being

We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.
Was it better to be with Teresa or to remain alone?
There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. 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 like a sketch. No "sketch" is not quite the word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sktech that is our life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture.

Einmal ist keinmal, says Tomas to himself. What happens but once, says the German adage, might as well not have happened at all. If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all.
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The unwritten contract of erotic frenship stipulated that Tomas should exclude all love from his life. The moment he violated that clause of the contract, his other mistressess would assume inferior status and become ripe for insurrection.
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All languages that derive from Latin form the word 'compassion' by combining the prefix meaning 'with'(com) and the root meaning 'suffering'(passio). In other languages - this word is translated by a noun formed of an equivalent prefix combined with the word that means 'feeling'.

In languages derived form Latin, 'compassion' means: we cannot look on coolly as others suffer; or, we sympathize with those who suffer. Another word with approximately the same meaning, 'pity' connotes a certain condescension towards the sufferer. 'To take pity on a woman' means that we are better off than she, that we stoop to her level, lower ourselves.

Thats why compassion generally inspires suspicion; it designates what is considered an inferior, second rate sentiment that has little to do with love. To love someone out of compassion means not really to love.
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We all reject that the love of our life may be something light or weightless; we presume our love is what must be, that without it our life would no longer be the same; we feel that Beethoven himself, gloomy and aweinspiring, is playing his tune to our great love.

Tomas often thought of Tereza's remark about his friend Z. and came to the conclusion that the love story of his life exemplified not 'Es muss sein'(it must be so), but rather 'Es konnte auch anders sein'(It could just as well be otherwise).

She just happened to be...
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But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.
She longed to do sth that would prevent her from turning back to Tomas. She longed to destroy brutally the past 7 years of her life. It was vertigo. A heady, insuperable longing to fall. We might also call vertigo the intoxication of the weak. Aware of his weakness, a man decides to give in rather than stand up to it. He is drunk with weakness, wishes to grow even weaker, wishes to fall down in the middle of the main square in front of everybody, wishes to be down, lower than down.

While people are fairly young and the musical composition of their lives is still in its opening bars, they can go about writing it together and exchanging motifs, but if they met when they are older, like Franz and Sabrina, their musical compositions are more or less complete, and every motif, every object, every word means sth different to each of them.