The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Beware. I am preparing to exercise my literary pretentiousness. (Don't be fooled though. I don't actually know anything.)

Milan Kundera, in his novel of the same name, has one of his characters bewail what he calls the 'unbearable lightness of being'. His point is, that the great difficulty of the human condition is not the weight of responsibility, or the huge consequences of each action. Instead it is the very insignificance of everything

 Each individual human is largely insignificant in the light of the wider world, and will probably neither change it, nor be remembered. If one is good, bad things may still happen, if bad, good things may still happen. The characters in the novel drown in their own insignificance and struggle to find a reference point for their existence.

I will probably be condemned now by literary experts everywhere for totally misrepresenting a brilliant novel. And they will be quite right too. Especially as I am about to twist it even more to fit my point. Mr Kundera, I apologise.

The Bible has a similar philosophy in the book of Ecclesiastes. Everything is meaningless, it states, the sun still rises and the sun still sets. Nothing man does will change that. Therefore, eat, drink, work hard and be merry. Enjoy life while you have it. It sounds deeply depressing but I find it liberating. It works especially well with a glass of wine after a stressful day at work. Work hard because that is part of enjoying life to the fullest. But don't panic. Nothing you do actually means anything. 

Again, I apologise to God for any misinterpretation. Though heaven knows he must be used to it. 

The reason I brought up the 'unbearable lightness' idea in the first place, is because the act of travelling does make you realise your insignificance. With no goal other than to see and learn from other cultures, it can feel a little wasteful and over privileged. We are not adding to the cultures we visit especially, other than economically - and we are on a budget. To add insult to injury we discovered last night that we are extremely untalented when it comes to swing dance. (Though it was brilliant fun and we will definitely go again.) In short, we are enthusiastic but a little useless. This applies both to swing dance and to our status as full time travellers.

I have two resolutions for this (though there is probably a third along the lines that we are as useless as any other humans in this sea of insignificance and should wisely accept and embrace it). 

One is to recap on our original intention which was to pursue a project whilst travelling. In my case this is to pursue my writing career, taking advantage of the greater time at my disposal and the numerous creative ideas which the new experiences are triggering. (Apparently). 

It was why we had decided to spend such a long time in each country and to base ourselves somewhere, albeit with trips out and about to see and do other things. Having said that, it feels as though we have been here forever and, other than blogging, I have yet to do any writing.

Aims, as sketched out this morning, are to continue writing one short story a month (which works rather well given that we move countries with about the same regularity), to finish rewriting my second novel (the first may be a bit of a dead loss) and to at least begin novel number three. And blog of course. Every week I should have completed another section of my rewrite  of novel number two (who we shall call 'Neville') and every other week or so - a short story. 

I re-read what I have done with Neville the Novel to date. He is, surprisingly, better than I remembered him. A good, smugly self satisfied start.

The plan today is to keep our costs down (we overspent in the last few days) and after an amazing breakfast cooked by the ultra talented Oanh, we sit about in the house for a while and I write while M does his blog entry from yesterday (which, from what I can tell, is rivalling Neville in length). This afternoon we will head out to investigate the park nearby where I will try to get a grip on Neville (who I expect will be slippery after a long time of no attention) and M will read the guidebook and research potential trips out and about. In actual fact a rain shower (think monsoon/ice bucket challenge without the ice) has prevented us from going out for now so we discover yet another cute little corner in Oanh's house and settle ourselves there. She has a genius  for creating different spaces in what is still really only a small house.

So far, so constructive. You and I will see how long these good intentions last.(I usually drastically overestimate what I can do in any given time.)

But much more importantly, I must alleviate my insignificance by telling you more about the handicrafts workshop we visited, where victims of Agent Orange, born with various defects as a result of the wide scale use of dioxin in the war, worked with painstaking precision and enormous skill to produce paintings, vases, screens, plates, you name it, out of eggshell, bamboo and mother of pearl.

We visited the factory on the way to Cu Chi Minh. Mr Binh, who has apparently written a book on the plight of the children born with Agent Orange related problems, (no, I can't find it on Amazon either) told us that up until as recently as 2001, the streets of Saigon were filled with beggars, the majority of which were Agent Orange victims. They were unable to work and begging was the only way to scrape a living. Now, with the cooperation of both Vietnamese and American governments, foundations have been set up to train and employ those who can work, though he points out that there are also those who had been rendered unable to do anything at all each day. 

The factory is hot but the workers, like other Vietnamese, seem not to be even considering breaking a sweat. The work is very intricate and the workers barely glance up as we troop in. Perhaps because they cannot spare the attention, perhaps they are simply all too used to gaping tourists. The handicrafts themselves are magnificent. I want to buy everything - to kit my entire house out with bamboo and eggshell. There are beautiful screens and huge paintings as well as the smaller items. In the end we have to limit ourselves, given bag size and money rations, to buying just one gift.

The foundation is called HH, Handicapped Handicrafts, and its website is www.namquocmst.com.VN though I  am having trouble connecting to that myself. Google Agent Orange victims though and there are countless charities which work to improve the lives of those affected. Have a look if you have time or money on your hands.

It will make me feel less insignificant.