The unbearable lightness of being
October 17, 2006
Kristin Fryer
The future will always be just beyond our grasp, uncertain and unknowable. It is possible only to know what is likely to happen, what is probable. Important decisions are usually made after much thought and careful consideration, but even then we are still blind, unable to see the outcome until it actually arrives. Nevertheless, every day countless decisions must be made. And despite the effort we may put into “big” decisions, sometimes the most insignificant-seeming decisions can have far-reaching consequences.
In the last few weeks, two people died and more than 200 became ill as a result of a very mundane decision: eating spinach. This E. coli crisis was completely unexpected, causing the entire continent of North America to fear of a previously benign, not to mention nutritious, vegetable. Until it became a matter of life and death, very few people lost sleep over what type of salad they would have with dinner.
As university students, most if not all of us are facing decisions, the consequences of which will affect or even determine the course of our lives. Christians, it seems, have an especially difficult task when it comes to decision-making, for too often there is an enormous sense of pressure to “do God’s will.”
Last week I had a long discussion with a good friend after he confessed that he had no idea what he wanted to do with his life; or, more accurately, he had no idea what God wanted him to do with his life. Without this knowledge, he said, it was impossible for him to choose a path, for fear that it might be the wrong choice.
The conversation reminded me of fears I had had growing up. When I was about six- or seven-years-old, a missionary family visited my church to speak about their activities in Africa. The stories they shared were captivating, but I left the church plagued with the horrifying prospect that God may one day send me there. For the rest of my childhood and youth, whenever I asked God about His plans for my life, my question was almost always accompanied by a plea that I might not be sent to Africa - anything but that.
I did not fail to see the irony when, after my first year of college, I joined a short-term missions team and went to Nigeria for a month. The experience wasn’t nearly as terrible as I expected, and, fortunately, the people were very kind and understanding of our awkward Western-ness. But though I returned home grateful for the experience, the trip removed once and for all the fear that God might have intentions of sending me there permanently. My childhood instincts were correct: given my temperament and abilities, I was not meant for that life.
I left the discussion with my friend still contemplating my objections to his self-imposed inertia. I do not believe that we lack direction; it is only that we do not recognize it as such. If you are artistic, that is direction; if art is not your thing, that is direction. Each of us is born with a certain genetic makeup and raised with particular values that will determine our talents and interests. When we recognize our abilities as direction, we can then cultivate the talents which have been given to us.
But even then, we are not necessarily bound to these things. I recently read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera, a wonderful novel set in Czechoslovakia during the Communist occupation. Tomas, the protagonist of the novel, is attracted to surgery, not because of coincidence or calculation, but because of a deep-seated desire; for him, to be a surgeon is an overriding necessity, an undeniable part of his being. But when he refuses to retract a letter he has written criticizing the Communist party, he loses his position and is forced to find work, first as a window washer and later as a truck driver.
At the end of the novel, Tomas is asked if he regrets the loss of his position and life’s mission.
“I have no mission,” he answers, “No one has. And it’s a terrific relief to realize you’re free, free of all missions.”
Though his decision to write that letter had consequences he could not foresee, nor would he have desired, his realization was that being is light: here for but a brief time and then gone. As each decision is subject to the impossibility of knowing for certain its outcomes, the line between seemingly weighty and light decisions blurs and is gone.
Now you go...
One Response to “The unbearable lightness of being”
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beautiful.