Kundera Quote: Food for Thought

As I logged on to post a few new thoughts, I came upon this entry that I wrote at the beginning of January just before departing for Guatemala. I think it is worth sharing. Milan Kundera has a succinct and powerful way of addressing worthwhile questions -- questions for human mind and heart together. I hope that I cultivate the ability to express succinctly, powerfully, nakedly the images and thoughts that dance around my heart and mind. The ability to be concise is not something that comes naturally to me. So -- here it is, Kundera food for thought. I hope that you are Living far from apathy and boredom. I hope the colors you paint are rich and inspired and passionate. Food for thought:

Excerpt from a Milan Kundera novel, Identity -- featuring two unforgetable characters, Chantal and Jean-Marc, who love each other so passionately, so heatedly that they drive each other mad. Creating a reality so crazy with poetry and mystery and jealousy and red-pulsing love that they cannot turn the lights off to fall asleep for fear of losing one another in some awful dream. A riveting novel. A few days after finishing the novel, I recalled something on page 81 to be soul-moving ... food for thought. And so I record it here -- not to post, to save until it comes up on some interconnected occasion.

They talk about death, about boredom, they drink wine, they laugh, they have a good time, the are happy.

Then Jean-Marc came back to his idea: "I'd say that the quantity of boredom, if boredom is measurable, is much greater today than it once was. Because the old occupations, at least most of them, were unthinkable without a passionate involvement: the peasants in love with their land; my grandfather, the magician of beautiful tables; the shoemakers who knew every villager's feet by heart; the woodsmen; the gardeners; probably even the soldiers killed with passion back then. The meaning of life wasn't an issue, it was there with them, quite naturally, in their workshops, in their fields. Each occupation had created its own mentality, its own way of being. A doctor would think differently from a peasant, a soldier would behave differently from a teacher. Today we're all alike, all of us bound together by our shared apathy toward our work. That very apathy has become a passion. The one great collective passion of our time."

Instinctively, I want to shout out to any soul who feels apathetic about his or her work -- apathy is not living, apathy is not life, leave your apathetic work to discover something that truly lights your fire and makes you burn with inspiration. We are not meant to be apathetic. Perhaps we are not meant to search so hard for "the meaning of life." Life just is ... the meaning is in the bread we bake, the birds we befriend, the laughter we share, the honest work it takes to survive on a planet trying so hard to provide for a population of homo sapiens who all too often forget to be grateful. Sigh. I am glad I will be able to revisit this passage from time to time. Checking in with myself to see if apathy lingers near my life and work from day to day. Checking in with myself to see if I feel inspired, passionate, alive. At this moment, right Now, I am bubbling over with gratitude, joy, and uncontainable inspiration for the journey I am about to make. Cambalacha, Guatemala, here I come. Open-heartedly. To learn, to share, to plant myself heart and soul in the fertile soils of San Marcos La Laguna for the next year. Om.