Monday, May 15, 2006 ;
1:18 PM
It's half past four in the morning, and I am wide awake. I have just finished another title by Milan Kundera, called "Identity", and once again I am amazed at his ability to unexpectedly transform experiences in our life and make it into a subtle love apologue of some sorts. In the story, Chantal and Jean-Marc pours through life, asserting their existence in life on the basis of their dependence on each other.
It's as though if we fail to recognise the potential of a companion in our lover, we fail to see ourselves, and agnosticism arises. Only perceptual and tangible objects can assure our exact knowledge - so, if for a brief moment, we cannot recognise a companion , our own existence cease to exist too.
I'm blown away by how true this is. How many times in your life that you doubt yourself, as an entity that exists in this world? Even small acts of thoughts, such as maybe to disguise yourself as someone else and present that new self to your lover just to see what he/she would react to that? Maybe you could, like Jean-Marc does, send love letters to Chantal, disguising himself as someone. He wants to assure her that she is still looked by other men, but in a way, Chantal's reaction to a new admirer drives him to self-reflection about himself, and his self in Chantal's eyes.
How many times have we thought about the fact that we float about in life, feeling extremely contented, and not realising that the reason why we are happy is because we recognise companions in our life, and how we react towards life is because we have companions to react with?
Imagine you are a single, lone object or entity in this world, totally isolated with everything and everyone. You cease to exist because there is no interaction with other objects of exact knowledge to assure your existence. You might even be just a thought.
It is extremely sad to know that as lovers do, most original 'selfs' dissolve as they procure a new self by indulging in over-recognition of their companion/s. But if following the above argument that if you are alone, you and your self might not exist, so then the self that exist when you start to recognise a companion would be the 'original' self. THe one and only.
So, it is amazing how this shift between fantasy and reality comes into play in this book. The reality is that both characters love each other, and possibly cannot live without each other. In real life, people are too busy thinking about fantasies such as this - their fantasies range from impossible sex orgies with top celebrities to having an insane amount of money.
Think about how you are, what you are and what your self is when you recognise a companion, be it a lover or a friend, or both.
And what you are when you do not recognise. Or cannot recognise.
play it softly, so gently♥
